Our weekly SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, September 28, 2015 will be a discussion of the following recent cases:

DC Comics v. Towle, Case No. 13-55484 (9th Cir. Sept. 23, 2015) (available here). The panel held that the Batmobile character was entitled to copyright protection and that DC Comics did not transfer its underlying rights to the batmobile character when it licensed rights to produce derivative works.  Defendants were found to be infringing and its laches defense was rejected due to evidence of willful infringement.

Apple v. Samsung, Case No. 2014-1802 (Fed Cir. Sept. 17, 2015) (available here). In the ongoing war between Apple and Samsung, the Fed Cir. in a 2-1 ruling issued a permanent injunction that forces Samsung to stop selling or to remove certain features from its devices that were found to violate Apple patents, such as the slide to unlock feature and certain auto correct features.