Chicago IP Litigation Blog is a Top Patent Blog

Posted on May 29, 2009 by R. David Donoghue

IP Watchdog's Gene Quinn is continuing his quest to identify the top patent blogs.  As a starting point he used traffic-based ratings from Technorati and Alexa to identify 50 of the most read patent blogs.  But Quinn did not stop there.  In order to add a subjective evaluation of the blogs, he is asking you to vote for your favorite and identify those that you follow here -- if you chose to vote for this blog, thank you.

I am generally not a fan of best blog competitions because blogging is so personal to both bloggers and blog readers.  But as the wise folks at Securing Innovation* pointed out, surveys like Quinn's benefit the entire intellectual property community by highlighting and promoting the best of the blogosphere.

Here is Quinn's list of top patent blogs in alphabetical order:


*  Thank you to Securing Innovation for putting together the hyperlinked list of blogs and giving me permission to copy them into this post.

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Nike v. Wal-Mart: Complaint May Show Future of Twombly Pleading

Posted on October 20, 2008 by R. David Donoghue

Nike, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., No. 08 C 5840 (N.D. Ill.) (Hibbler, J.).

As I have said before, I generally do not discuss complaints, but Nike's design patent suit against Wal-Mart last week has drawn significant blog coverage  -- click here for the complaint.  And most of that coverage has missed the most interesting element of the complaint, from a legal procedure perspective (and yes, legal procedure is interesting, at least to me):  Nike's detailed pleadings.  Instead of simply identifying its design patents (related to its Nike Shox product line) and Wal-Mart's allegedly infringing shoes, Nike put detailed design patent claim charts in its complaint showing an accused product from the same angle as each figure in the design patent.  Here is a portion of one of the charts:

Of course, claim charts for design patents are less detailed and time-intensive to create than utility patent charts.  But claim charts in the body of a complaint are relatively rare for any type of patent case.  This may suggest a recognition that the Supreme Court's Twombly antitrust decision which required pleadings to meet a new "plausibility" standard coud be applied in patent cases -- click here for more coverage of Twombly-related issues in the Blog's archives.  Of course, I just finished writing an article for John Marshall's Review of Intellectual Property Law about how courts are dealing with the Twombly standards in patent cases, so I may just be seeing Twombly everywhere.I expect my article to be published next month, and I do not want to scoop it by describing my finding here.  I can say, however, that my research suggests that Twombly is being applied (nationwide, not necessarily in the Northern District) in some interesting and uneven ways.  More on that in a few weeks, after the article publishes.

For more coverage of this case, check out:

 

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