Anderson

Let’s start with a confession: try as he may, this blogger still finds the valuation of trademarks and brands a bit of a black box. For sure, there are some fine books that attempt to explain how this kind of valuation is done (see, here , for example, the excellent book by Gordon Smith and Susan Richey, Trademark Valuation: A Tool for Brand Management ). But the sense of unease remains. Against this backdrop, the following headline that appeared on reuters.com on Thursday grabbed his attention: “Diageo to buy George Clooney’s tequila for up to $1 billion.” Diageo , despite being saddled with one of the worst rebranded company names in recent memory, has managed to become the world’s largest spirits maker. Recently, it has taken an increasing interest in the high-growth market for tequila. Enter “Casamigos” (meaning “house of friends” in Spanish), which was established only in 2013 by actor George Clooney, entrepreneur Rande Gerber , the spouse of supermodel Cindy Crawford , and rea...

One of the pressing problems in the United States has been access to legal services, particularly to the poor and the middle class.   For sure, the wealthy have access to lawyers, but the poor and middle class apparently struggle.   Indeed, the Legal Services Corp. recently released a report titled, “The Justice Gap: Measuring the Unmet Legal Needs of Low Income Americans.”   The Legal Services Corp. teamed up with the University of Chicago to collect data concerning the gap and made some (perhaps unsurprising) findings.   The most important finding: “86% of the civil legal problems reported by low income Americans in the past year received inadequate or no legal help.”   Moreover, “71% of households with veterans or other military personnel have experienced a civil legal problem in the past year.” And, “more than 60 million Americans have family incomes 125% below the Federal Poverty Line,” including 1.7 million veterans.   In Seniors' households, “56% had...

The U.S. Department of Energy announced on June 15, 2017 the award of $258 million in research funding to six U.S. companies: Advanced Microsystems, Cray, Intel, HP, NVIDIA, and IBM.   The research funding is to support the development of the exascale supercomputer ecosystem.   An exascale computer is 50 times faster than today’s super computers.   T he U.S. has five of the world’s top-ten fastest computers, but the U.S.’s fastest computer is third after the top two located in China.   The six companies will provide additional funding to make the investment close to $430 million in total.   The press release is available, here .  

Professor V.K. Unni of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta has authored a short and concise opinion paper titled, Promoting Innovation: Moving Towards a Better Intellectual Property Regime, in the Financial Express.   His paper discusses the importance of finding the right balance between patent rights and competition law with respect to standard essential patents for India.   Interestingly, he observes that in India injunctive relief has been granted relatively frequently with respect to standard essential patents held by Ericsson against Indian companies, particularly when compared to pharmaceuticals.   He notes that, “the Delhi High Court [recently] held that laws dealing with protection of IPR and competition do not have any irreconcilable repugnancy or conflict, and upheld the jurisdiction of the [Competition Commission of India] to entertain complaints dealing with abuse of dominance against the patent holder.”   The article is available, here . ...

A new group of professional, large scale, content creators has formed to fight online piracy: Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).   The new group, with around 30 members, includes Netflix, Amazon and many well-known entities such as BBC Worldwide, Paramount, HBO, Univision and Telemundo.  The press release notes that there are "480 online services worldwide available for consumers to watch films and television programs legally on demand." The press release further ties the problem of piracy to jobs and even the danger of identity theft.   The press release notes: Films and television shows can often be found on pirate sites within days – and in many cases hours – of release. Last year, there were an estimated 5.4 billion downloads of pirated wide release films and primetime television and VOD shows using peer-to-peer protocols worldwide. There were also an estimated 21.4 billion total visits to streaming piracy sites worldwide across both desktops ...

Yesterday, June 12, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court surprisingly granted cert to hear the Oil States Energy Services v. Green’s Energy Group’s  case (Notably, a Rule 36 affirmance by the Federal Circuit which means there is not an opinion—the Federal Circuit is just affirming without giving reasons.).  The U.S. Supreme Court has limited its review to one question: “Whether inter partes review, an adversarial process used by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to analyze the validity of existing patents, violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.”  Could this case completely wipe out inter partes review proceedings (IPRs)?  That is certainly the hope of some.  Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court refused cert to hear the MCM Portfolio v. HP case in 2016 which raised a very similar issue.  As stated by Judge Dyk in the below Federal Circuit opinion: “On the merits, we reject MCM’s argument tha...

The Communications and Computer Industry Association has released a report that attempts to ascertain the value of fair use to the U.S. economy.  The 2017 report places the value added to the economy at $2.8 trillion dollars in 2014 with 18 million workers “benefiting from fair use.”  The 2017 report also states that $5.6 trillion dollars of revenue was generated by fair use industries.  Some examples of fair use industries include: “manufacturers of consumer devices that allow individual copying and recording; educational institutions; software developers; and Internet search and web hosting providers.”  In discussing fair use, the report states: One of the benefits of the flexible fair use doctrine is its adaptability, which can cover unanticipated new uses and technologies. Whereas narrow exceptions drafted around specific technologies become outdated rapidly, the flexibility of the fair use doctrine has, at different times, enabled both consumer electronics and onlin...

Cushman and Wakefield, the global commercial real estate firm, has released its first tech cities report .  The report attempts to ascertain which are the most successful “technology cities” in the United States.  The report notes that so-called tech cities outperform other cities in terms of commercial real estate value and other factors, but no one has attempted to determine exactly what is a “tech city.”  That is what Cushman and Wakefield attempts by looking at factors leading to a “tech stew”.  “Tech stew” is the term encompassing the characteristics leading to development of a tech city.  Some of those factors include: institutions of higher learning; venture capital; tech workers; knowledge workers; educated workers and growth entrepreneurship.  For example, universities of higher learning noted for San Francisco and San Jose include: UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis, University of the Pacific, Santa Clara University and University of San Francisco [a...

The National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association has released a list of the top 100 universities  granted U.S. utility patents.  The top 10 of the list includes: 1) The Regents of the University of California: 505 patents; 2) MIT: 278; 3) Stanford: 244; 4) Cal Tech: 201; 5) Tsinghua University/Graduate School at Shenzen: 181; 6) Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation: 168; 7) John Hopkins: 167; 8) University of Texas: 162; 9) University of Michigan: 142; and 10) Columbia University: 118.  The top 10 non-US universities include: 1) Tsinghua University/Graduate School at Shenzen; 2) Korea Institute of Science and Technology; 3) King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; 4) National Tsinghua University; 5) Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; 6) National Taiwan University/National Taiwan University Hospital; 7) King Saud University; 8) Industry and Academic Cooperation at Yonsei University; 9) Ramot and Tel Aviv University;...

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, What's Behind the Biotech Sector's Rebound: Biotech ETFs are Getting Hearts Pumping Again , Gerrard Cowen discusses the swings in the value of biotechnology stocks.  Last year was a relatively poor year for biotech stocks—perhaps attributed to the election campaign rhetoric about reforming drug prices.  This year biotech stocks are looking up, and why?  The article discusses several reasons provided by experts: 1) Trump was elected and he’s likely to treat the sector more favorably than Clinton despite his rhetoric; 2) merger and acquisition activity is likely to increase in the coming year because of likely Trump tax changes; 3) Trump may streamline FDA regulations; and 4) biotech companies were undervalued last year.  The article also outlines risks to the sector which mostly revolve around problems with uncertain politics and difficulty in valuation.  Interestingly, the article notes that despite difficulty with...

In TC Heartland v. Kraft Food Group Brands , a recent opinion, the US Supreme Court decided to restrict the meaning of the patent venue statute.  This statute essentially provides in which judicial district a defendant may be sued for patent infringement.  The patent specific statute, 13 USC 1400(b), provides: “[a]ny civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.”  The US Supreme Court had to analyze whether “where the defendant resides” means “where the defendant is in incorporated” per a previous US Supreme Court case analyzing that provision, or according to subsequent amendments by Congress to the general venue statute which has a much broader definition of what “resides” means.  Ultimately, the US Supreme Court in a unanimous Associate Justice Thomas opinion (Associate Justice Gorsuch not partic...