On October 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC. The question before the Supreme Court is whether, under 11 U.S.C. § 365 (“§ 365”) of the Bankruptcy Code, a debtor”™s rejection of a license agreement terminates the obligations of the agreement, including the loss of a trademark license.

On June 25, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court (“Supreme Court”) granted certiorari in Helsinn Healthcare S.A., v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. The question before the Supreme Court is whether, under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”), an inventor”™s sale of an invention to a third party qualifies as prior art when the claimed invention was not publicly disclosed before one year of its application filing date.

On June 28, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court (“Supreme Court”) granted certiorari to Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com. The question before the Supreme Court is whether, under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) of the Copyright Act, a copyright owner can bring an infringement suit after delivering the proper deposit, application, and fee to the U.S. Copyright Office (“Copyright Office”), but before the Register of Copyrights has acted on the application for registration.

This is a follow-up on WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., (respectively, “WesternGeco” and “ION”) from our article in the Winter 2018 newsletter.  On June 22, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States (“Supreme Court”) reversed the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In doing so, the Supreme Court held that a patent owner may recover lost foreign profits, under 35 U.S.C. § 284, for infringement under 35 U.S.C § 271(f)(2).