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By Bloomberg

Avon Products Inc. and Victoria’s Secret Direct Brand Management LLC won an appeal tossing a jury verdict against them that had concluded they infringed patents for Soverain Software’s patents for virtual shopping carts, a federal appeals court ruled.

Soverain Software LLC’s patents were previously found to be invalid and the issue cannot be revisited, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an opinion.

The court on Jan. 22 invalidated patents in a case Soverain filed against Newegg Inc. The court said two patents were an obvious variation of technology developed by CompuServe, and a third was deemed invalid on other obviousness grounds. The January ruling benefited dozens of companies sued by Soverain over the patents, including Oracle Corp., IBM Corp., EBay Inc., Best Buy Co., Bloomingdales Inc., J. Crew, Kohls, Macy’s, Office Depot Inc., Radioshack, and Home Depot.

Soverain should not get a second chance to argue the validity of the patents after the earlier ruling, the Federal Circuit wrote in this week’s opinion.

The jury had awarded $8.7 million against Avon, and $9.2 million against Victoria’s Secret at the trial in their case.

The case is Soverain LLC v. Victoria’s Secret, 12-cv-1649, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington).

Patents

Silence Therapeutics Says European RNAi Patent Upheld in Appeal

The European Patent Office upheld a key RNA interference (RNAi) trigger modification patent against challenges by four parties, including Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Alcon Laboratories Inc., Silence Therapeutics Plc said in a statement.

One of the challengers was Silence’s subsidiary Sirna Therapeutics.

The Board of Appeal, at an oral hearing, validated Silence’s patent covering an alternating pattern of modified and unmodified nucleotides, Silence said in a statement.

Equivalent patents have been granted to the company in the U.S., China, Israel, and other nations, according to the statement.

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

McDonald’s Files Objection to Supermac’s Trademark Registration

McDonald’s Corp. filed a 41-page objection to European Union trademark registration by the Irish restaurant company Supermac’s Ltd., Irish Central reported.

The Supermac’s chain of over 100 restaurants, founded in 1978 by Pat McDonagh in County Galway, Ireland, seeks to expand into the U.K., the European Union and Australia.

Similarities between the name and menus of the two restaurant chains will cause confusion among consumers, fast- food giant McDonald’s said in its filing, according to Irish Central.

“I am surprised by the points submitted by McDonald’s in objection to our expansion into the EU,” McDonagh said in a statement on the Supermac’s website.

Supermac’s and McDonald’s have grown and coexisted together in Ireland since 1978 “as two very distinctive brands with immediately identifiable menus and a clear difference in ingredients and taste, and there has never been any confusion for our customers,” McDonagh said in the statement.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Purring Kitten Flagged By YouTube as Infringing Music Copyright

YouTube’s software that functions as a roving bot seeking infringing music flagged a video of a purring kitten named Phantom, TorrentFreak reported.

A 12-second loop of the kitty cat’s purring caught the attention of the site’s content identification system, which tagged it as belonging to EMI Publishing Ltd., according to TorrentFreak.

YouTube informed the Digihaven channel, which had uploaded the video in March, that the Kitten’s purring was infringing the copyright of a musical composition called “Focus.” Digihaven then filed a dispute to “reclaim” the kitten’s rights, according to TorrentFreak.

Things seem to have worked out for Digihaven and its purring kitten.

“When it’s brought to our attention that a video or channel has been claimed mistakenly, we work with the claimant to fix it. Everything is now purrrfectly fine with this video,” said Zayna Aston, a YouTube spokeswoman.

The video, which continues to be available, has garnered about 6,790 views, according to its YouTube channel late Thursday afternoon, where Digihaven posted, “Subscribe and save the cats of YouTube. Large companies might want to take videos like this down! Don’t let them!”