U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
The Third Circuit held that Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable and that a competing AI legal-research company did not fairly use them as training material.
The Third Circuit held that a professor could not copyright his geometric teaching approach and that two machine-learning courses lacked substantial similarity in protected expression.
The Third Circuit upheld a fudge-recipe trade-secret verdict and attorney-fee awards on unsuccessful trademark and copyright claims.
The Third Circuit held that Jiaherb failed to prove saw palmetto oil was adulterated, defeating its Lanham Act false-advertising and related contract claims.
The Third Circuit reversed dismissal of Mike Huckabee’s right-of-publicity suit against Meta over fake CBD endorsement ads, finding that three factors — Huckabee’s well-known opposition to cannabis, Meta’s history of hosting similar fake-celebrity ads, and a link to a fake Fox News site — plausibly established that Meta knew or should have known the ads were fraudulent.
The Third Circuit vacated the dismissal of a copyright infringement complaint against 54 foreign e-commerce defendants, holding the district court’s standing order failed to properly analyze personal jurisdiction under the purposeful availment test.
The Third Circuit affirmed denial of J&J’s preliminary injunction against Samsung’s sublicensing of a Stelara biosimilar to a Cigna subsidiary, holding that loss of market share in the biologics market does not categorically constitute irreparable harm in breach-of-contract cases.
The Third Circuit affirmed denial of a preliminary injunction, holding that UpCodes’ verbatim republication of copyrighted ASTM building standards incorporated into law likely constitutes fair use because its purpose — providing free public access to the law — is transformative.
The Third Circuit affirmed the denial of ASTM’s preliminary injunction, holding that UpCodes’ free online publication of copyrighted technical standards that have been incorporated by reference into building codes likely constitutes fair use — even though UpCodes is a for-profit company that reproduced the standards in full.
A Pennsylvania federal court upheld a $28,000 jury verdict for Penn State in its long-running trademark suit against vintage-merch retailer Vintage Brand, treating initial interest confusion not as a standalone doctrine but as one way to satisfy the standard multi-factor confusion analysis.