Business Methods

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously May 13, 2013 in favor of Monsanto in Bowman v. Monsanto, a case involving Monsanto’s recombinant, Roundup Ready^® seeds. The opinion rejected the arguments from petitioner, Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, that Monsanto’s rights in its seed had been “exhausted” by their first sale (here, to a grain elevator) and that the Court should reject any “special exception” to the first-sale doctrine of patent exhaustion for “self-replicating technologies.”

On March 16, 2013, the final (and most significant) portion of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) took effect, and the United States broke from a first-to-invent regime to a first-inventor-to-file (FITF) regime. Of course, this break is far from clean as applications filed before March 16, 2013, as well as certain applications filed after March 15, 2013, will continue to enjoy the advantages of the old first-to-invent system. Since the AIA was enacted on September 16, 2011, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has played an important role in implementing the new patent law. In the eighteen months between the statute's enactment and the March 16 effective date, the USPTO published twelve notices of proposed rulemaking, issued a patent trial practice guide, and published a guidance document on the FITF provisions of the AIA, all of which culminated in the revision of the rules of practice in title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.). Set forth in this article are a few rule revisions that practitioners should pay careful attention to as we proceed into the FITF regime.

On February 14, 2013, Tiffany filed a lawsuit against Costco Wholesale Corporation (“Costco”), alleging that Costco was engaging in the sale of counterfeit TIFFANY diamond engagement rings. Tiffany’s complaint against Costco alleged violations of federal and New York law, including counterfeiting, trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition, injury to business reputation, false and deceptive business practices, and false advertising. In its defense and in support of its counterclaims, Costco mainly argued that “[t]he word Tiffany is a generic term for ring settings comprising multiple slender prongs extending upward from a base to hold a single gemstone.”  This article reviews the relative strengths/weaknesses of the main arguments presented by the parties and provides an assessment of which party is more likely to prevail based on the strength of these arguments.