Upcoming Supreme Court Oral Arguments in IP & Tech Cases

by Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court will be handling some significant cases over the next few months that may have a major impact for folks working in IP & Tech fields. The following is brief list sorted by the date of oral arguments.

• Feb 21 – Gonzales v. Google (Does the safe harbor of CDA Section 230 shield Google from liability for encouraging users to view offending videos).
• Feb 22 – Twitter v. Taamneh (Can Twitter be held liable for providing a service that aids and abets terrorism, despite its substantial non-violative uses).
• March 21 – Abitron v. Hetronic (Extraterritorial application of US Trademark Law — damages from foreign sales).
• March 22 – Jack Daniels v. VIP (Commercial humor leading to fair use or no-infringement/dilution in the TM context)
• March 27 – Amgen v. Sanofi (Full Scope Enablement: How much description is enough to satisfy the enablement requirement).
• April 17 – Slack v. Pirani (For securities liability, what causal link is required between misleading statement and the purchase of shares).
• April 18 – Groff v. DeJoy (Should Title VII of the Civil Rights Act be given more teeth to protect religious liberty in the employment context).
• April 19 – Counterman v. Colorado (When does speech rise to a “true threat”, unprotected by the First Amendment.  Here, it was a series of unsolicited Facebook direct messages.  The question is whether his intent (mens rea) matters, or can he be convicted based only upon the reasonably perceived threat of the recipient.).
• April 24 – Dupree v. Younter (If SJ is denied on a question of law, must the party reassert the issue in JMOL in order to preserve the issue for appeal. Although not a patent case, this issue comes up all the time in patent litigation).
• April 25 – Yegiazaryan v. Smagin (When can an injury to a foreign plaintiff’s “intangible property” serve as the basis for a RICO claim).