By Annette I. Kahler Signed into law on October 11, 2018, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA) reforms U.S. Copyright law in significant ways that will affect the licensing of digital music. Pursuant to pre-MMA copyright law, “mechanical” licenses for reproduction and distribution of musical works in phonorecords were obtained by licensees…
Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti (HRFM) has earned its place as one of the Top 10 Firms with the Best Allowance Rate by Juristat. With an 86.82 Alice Allowance Rate over a 3-year time period, HRFM has one of the 10 highest percentages of applications with one or more Alice rejections that were eventually allowed…
By Philip E. Hansen The start of a new year provides the opportunity for a highly subjective retrospective on 35 years of patent law — where we’ve been and where we might be going. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas (1965-1969) was reputed to have said that a typical judge’s reaction to a patent is like…
Join David P. Miranda, former New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) president and current partner at the intellectual property law firm Heslin, Rothenberg, Farley and Mesiti as he and his guests discuss all things legal – and some that are not — in the 10-episode first season of NYSBA’s Miranda Warnings podcast. Featured guests include…
By Wayne F. Reinke About five months have gone by since my last update on the state of patentable subject matter after the 2014 Alice Supreme Court decision and its progeny. A number of important developments have taken place during this time, mostly positive in the sense of rebalancing the outcomes Alice patentable subject matter…
By Wayne F. Reinke People around the world enjoy craft beers. IP attorneys do too, so much so that my firm, Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti (HRFM), sponsored a recent Brewers Association Craft Brewers Conference. You can’t help but admire the enthusiasm and dedication of craft brewers. The industry has been growing at a rapid…
By Wayne F. Reinke I have come across several smaller gaming companies that say they have never explored Intellectual Property (IP) protection. Typically, I respond with some examples of things they could be protecting. The reactions run the gamut from panic to interest to a glassy-eyed stare. This article will address the various types of…
By Stephen P. Scuderi Provisional patent applications (PPAs) were authorized in the United States in 1995. PPAs have a one year life span whereupon they will expire if they are not converted into a non-provisional patent application (a regular application). For a variety of reasons, PPAs are often used as an alternative to initially filing…
Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti is proud to be a sponsor of the New York Battery and Energy Storage (NY-BEST) annual conference being held March 14-15 in Albany. NY-BEST is hosting its 8th annual “Capture the Energy” Conference. The two-day conference is taking place just steps from the New York State Capitol building and will…
By Stephen P. Scuderi This paper will present an overview of some of the issues pertaining to the disposition of patent rights to inventions made under a government R&D contract. As will be seen, without careful adherence to the statutes and regulations governing such patent rights, it is possible for a contractor to unintentionally lose…