Taking a swing at the first sale doctrine — Resellers raise challenge in trademark infringement case

When a distributor sold a manufacturer’s goods to a reseller, and tried to hide this practice by switching or removing the original serial number label, the manufacturer found out when customers began calling them with now-invalid warranty requests. In its defense, the distributor claimed that it was protected by the “first sale” doctrine, in which a producer isn’t allowed to control distribution of its trademarked product beyond the first sale of the product, and that they had done nothing to make the product materially different so as to lose this protection. This article discusses the Tenth Circuit’s ruling, while a sidebar looks at whether the distributor’s disclosure notice was sufficient to give it protection.
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Rough waters: Inventor’s standing at issue in patent case

A designer assisted his employer in patenting a product and executing patent assignments, transferring his interest to the employer, while he formally declared himself to be a co-inventor. Upset when he was later terminated, he sued. But the Federal Circuit had to decide whether he had standing to pursue his action for correction of ownership.
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Fair or foul? What qualifies as transformative use, not copyright infringement

Under the fair use doctrine, transformative use of a copyrighted work may preempt any infringement liability. But can a commercial use that merely archives a work without adding anything to the work qualify as “transformative”? This was precisely the issue faced by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when four high school students sued an online plagiarism detection system that was archiving their works without their permission.
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Federal Circuit clarifies double patenting test

The doctrine of double patenting is intended to prevent the unjustified extension of patent exclusivity beyond the term of a patent. The two-way test for double patenting can prove more favorable to a patent applicant than the one-way test. But, in one recent case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the two-way test is appropriate only in limited circumstances.
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