For our weekly SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, March 30th, 2020 we will discuss the following case:
Allen v. Cooper. (US 2020) (available here)
A photographer sued the state of North Carolina for copyright infringement. Plaintiff was the exclusive photographer of a shipwreck in the ocean and discovered that the state of North Carolina had used some of his copyrighted photos. North Carolina moved to dismiss the lawsuit on the ground of state sovereign immunity. Plaintiff countered that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA) removed the States’ sovereign immunity in copyright infringement cases. The District Court agreed with Plaintiff, finding the CRCA’s text a clear congressional intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity. The Supreme Court disagreed and found the CRCA unconstitutional.
Utility Patent Neutral Evaluation Procedure
Amazon.com has started a new Utility Patent Neutral Evaluation Procedure. The procedure was started in part to stop false patent infringement complaints from being filed with Amazon to prevent legitimate sellers from selling on Amazon. Part of the procedure is an arbitration like process where both parties pay for a neutral third party to evaluate the merits of a patent infringement claim. The party that wins gets reimbursed.
To facilitate the discussion we will review the procedure and current commentary on the subject.
- The procedure
- An ABA article
- An example of someone going through the procedure
- An Amazon Sellers forum where sellers discuss the procedure
All are invited to attend. Due to the Covid-19 situation the meeting will be conducted electronically via zoom. Join us by using this link. This activity is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit. If you will be joining us, please RSVP to Elisha Manzur by 9 am Monday morning.
[…] case of sovereign immunity in view of Allen v. Cooper (discussed by SoCal IP Institute previously here). In a short summary of that case, the Supreme Court decided that the Copyright Remedy […]