Banner Witcoff

Banner & Witcoff client Mentor Graphics has prevailed in a Federal Circuit appeal by rival Synopsys, Inc. seeking to overturn the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s final decision in an inter partes review that upheld challenged claims of Mentor’s U.S. Patent No. 6,240,376. The ‘376 patent at issue relates to software tools used in the…

Banner & Witcoff client Seagate Technology won a clean sweep of four inter partes reviews invalidating two patents of Enova Technology Corp. The patents relate to computer storage device encryption technology and were asserted against Seagate by Enova in district court litigation. In a series of four Final Written Decisions issued between September 2, 2015…

FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S EN BANC DECISION IN LEXMARK INTERNATIONAL, INC. V. IMPRESSION PRODUCTS, INC. MAKES SIGNIFICANT DETERMINATIONS RELATING TO THE DOCTRINE OF PATENT EXHAUSTION By Jason S. Shull On February 12, 2016, the Federal Circuit issued its en banc decision inLexmark International, Inc. v. Impression Products, Inc. The en banc decision made two significant determinations relating…

On February 12, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in an en banc opinion, ruled in favor of Banner & Witcoff client Lexmark International, Inc., finding the “first sale” doctrine under patent law does not apply to: (1) patented articles sold subject to restrictions on resale and reuse communicated to the buyer…

Banner & Witcoff remembers our friend and partner Frank Wolffe, who died on February 3, 2016. A native of Washington, D.C., Mr. Wolffe graduated from the University of Maryland in 1954 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. Upon his graduation, Mr. Wolffe held a position as research engineer with the Sun Oil Company,…

Binal J. Patel discusses why banks are not only obtaining more patents, but also higher-quality patents, in Bloomberg Businessweek. Please click here to read the article, “Wall Street Is Trying to Beat Silicon Valley at Its Own Game.”

Katie L. Becker, Matthew P. Becker, Joseph J. Berghammer, Aaron Bowling, Scott A. Burow, Marc S. Cooperman, Azuka C. Dike, Louis DiSanto, Katie Laatsch Fink, Shawn P. Gorman, Michael J. Harris, Audra C. Eidem Heinze, Sean J. Jungels, Kevin C. Keenan, Michael L. Krashin, Erik S. Maurer, Timothy C. Meece, Janice V. Mitrius, Jon O.…

Ross A. Dannenberg discusses the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s rejection of Sony’s attempt to trademark the words, “Let’s Play,” in Gamasutra. Mr. Dannenberg says it’s interesting that the trademark was rejected based on someone else’s trademark — “Let’z Play” — and not due to undescriptiveness. Please click here to read the article.

Banner and Witcoff is recognized as a top firm in the 2016 edition of the World Trademark Review 1000, the premier standalone research directory that focuses exclusively on trademark practices and practitioners. Helen Hill Minsker also received a top individual ranking in trademark prosecution and strategy in the 2016 edition. According to World Trademark Review:…

Banner & Witcoff welcomes associates Daniel Douglas and Nigel Fontenot to its Washington, D.C., office and Pei Wu to its Boston office. Mr. Douglas focuses his practice on patent prosecution in the fields of computer software, user interfaces, business methods, algorithms, wearable devices, networks and signal processing, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and computational linguistics. He…