Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

This case involved a type of patent litigation settlement known as a "pay for delay" or "reverse payment" agreement. In this type of settlement, a patent holder paid the allegedly infringing generic drug company to delay entering the market until a specified date, thereby protecting the patent monopoly against a judgment that the patent was invalid or would not be infringed by the generic competitor. This case began when the FTC filed a complaint in district court alleging that the reverse payment settlements between the holder of a drug patent and two generic manufacturers of the drug were unfair restraints on trade that violated federal antitrust laws. The court's precedent established the rule that, absent sham litigation or fraud in obtaining the patent, a reverse payment settlement was immune from antitrust attack so long as its anticompetitive effects fell within the scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent. The court rejected the FTC's claims to the contrary and affirmed the judgment. View "FTC v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., et al." on Justia Law

Optical Systems Technology, Inc. (OSTI) and Knights Armament Company (KAC), and its owner, dispute the ownership of two trademarks used in the manufacturing and marketing of clip-on night vision devices: "Universal Night Sight" and "UNS." At issue was the district court's entry of partial summary judgment in favor of KAC on OSTI's misappropriation of trade secrets counterclaim. Also at issue was OSTI's pending motion for summary judgment on all counts of KAC's complaint. The court held that the district court was correct in concluding as a matter of law that OSTI's trade secret misappropriation claim was barred by the statute of limitations and the district court correctly granted summary judgment to KAC on OSTI's Count IV, based upon undisputed facts in the record. The court also held that the district court committed no clear error when it determined that OSTI owned the mark; the mark was descriptive, without secondary meaning; and OSTI had no protectable rights in the mark. Therefore, the court held that KAC could not be liable for trademark infringement based on rights to a mark that OSTI could not enforce.

This appeal stemmed from a judgment against an entertainment company, plaintiffs, that sued the current members of "Expose," an American girl dance band, about the trademark name of the band. At issue was whether the district court erred when it found that plaintiffs failed to prove that it had enforceable rights in the Expose mark at common law. The court held that the district court did not err when it determined that the individual band members were the common law owners of the Expose mark where the record supported findings that plaintiffs had no enforceable rights in the mark and where the court need not reach the issue of consumer confusion because plaintiffs had no enforceable rights. The court further held that the remaining grounds for relief asserted by plaintiffs were without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.