I’m Dreaming of a White ...

Sometimes the long road of Intellectual Property infringement ends up in Bankruptcy Court. Then the normal rules can change. %CUT% Tech Pharmacy Services, who owned patents for pharmaceutical dispensing machines sued Provider Meds LLC and its affiliated companies for patent infringement. The parties ended up settling. As part of the settlement, Tech Pharmacy licensed the patents to Provider Meds. The Provider Meds' companies filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization cases. The cases were later converted to Chapter 7 liquidation cases and a Chapter 7 trustee was appointed. But, Provider Meds somehow managed to not list the patent license on their bankruptcy schedules. The Chapter 7 trustee had 60 days from the date of conversion of the cases to assume the licenses. Since the trustee didn’t know about the licenses, the trustee didn’t assume them. Since they weren’t assumed, they were deemed rejected by operation of law. Rejection means that Tech Pharmacy would no longer have to honor the license agreements. The Chapter 7 trustee sold Provider Meds’ assets to RPD Holdings. Imagine RPD’s surprise when it realized the sale didn’t include assignment of the Tech Pharmacy patent licenses. RPD appealed. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court rulings that the rejected licenses couldn’t be resurrected.

Updating a trademark can be risky if someone else gets in ahead of you. %CUT% Inn at St. Johns, LLC registered its name “5ive Restaurant” in logo form. So far so good. Eleven years later, St. Johns decided to update its trademark to 5ive Steakhouse in logo form. But St. Johns got derailed. Three years after St. Johns registered its first trademark, OTG Management Inc. registered 5Steak. (All 3 mark drawings appear to the left). The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) refused registration of St. Johns’ 5ive Steakhouse due to a likelihood of confusion with the OTG’s 5Steak registration. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board affirmed the refusal.