Banner Witcoff

Banner Witcoff is excited to sponsor OWLS Lacrosse’s 6th Annual Night Owl Benefit on March 24. The benefit celebrates OWLS student-athletes and features a presentation from OWLS leadership. OWLS is a sports-based youth development organization that creates opportunities for underserved youth in Chicago. With lacrosse as its foundation, OWLS provides impactful mentorship, academic intervention, and…

By Victoria Webb and Zachary Getzelman Two years ago, COVID-19 shut downs were just beginning in the United States. Litigation cases ground to a halt as courts, judges, parties, and attorneys developed new procedures to adjust to a rapidly changing world. Intellectual property (IP) litigations eventually resumed and even continued throughout the pandemic, but the…

Banner Witcoff’s Katie Laatsch Fink is scheduled to participate in a McCarthy Institute IP-Con panel. The panel, titled Trademark Year in Review, will be held on Thursday, March 17. Katie and her co-panelists will be discussing a variety of issues including the Trademark Modernization Act, Trademark Fraud, Secondary Liability, Trademarks in the Metaverse, and NFTs.…

By Sonia Okolie and Craig Kronenthal So, what’s new at the PTAB? Technicalities for termination, expert declaration length, requests for rehearing, and more! A joint request takes two. Tesla, Inc. v. Unicorn Energy GmbH, IPR2022-00110, Paper 19 (February 17, 2022) (McMillin, joined by Jurgovan and Khan) (finding that no joint request to terminate was made…

Banner Witcoff is ranked as a top trademark firm in Illinois in the 2022 edition of World Trademark Review 1000 – The World’s Leading Trademark Professionals. In addition to the firm-wide ranking, the guide recognized three Banner Witcoff attorneys: Anna King, Katie Laatsch Fink, and Richard Stockton— as leading practitioners for trademark prosecution and strategy.…

Click here to read, “Gauging IPR Estoppel’s Reach After Fed. Circ. Caltech Ruling.” Update: On February 22, 2022, the Federal Circuit issued a correction (“Errata”) to its decision in Caltech.  The language suggesting that IPR estoppel extends to non-petitioned claims was deleted.  It was clarified that IPR estoppel extends to “all grounds not stated in…

By John Curry and Craig Kronenthal So, what’s new at the PTAB? Expert qualifications, proving reduction to practice, and denial of a motion to withdraw, and more! General Relativity: Lack of experience in narrowly defined subject matter is not a reason to exclude an expert when the expert has general expertise in the area. Unified…

Banner Witcoff was ranked No. 1 on Juristat’s list of Top Firms for Design Patents. According to Juristat, firms were evaluated on three key metrics: The number of design patent applications filed, The allowance rate, and The average number of office actions before allowance. Juristat awarded Banner Witcoff the top design firm ranking.  The analysis…

By Richard Stockton The World Intellectual Property Organization, which administers the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs, announced that China will join the Hague System on May 5, 2022.  The Hague System allows the filing of a single international design application that can lead to design protection in more than 90 jurisdictions. …