Video Transcript

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Hello, I’m Gary Schuster, and welcome back to Innovation Cafe. Today I want to talk briefly about what not to do if you want to avoid getting dragged into US District Court over your intellectual property.

If you create a case or controversy — meaning you accuse someone of infringing, you send a letter saying, “You might want to license this because I think you’re infringing” — that’s a case or controversy. Federal courts in the United States can only hear actual cases or controversies. So if you just happen to have a patent and someone else happens to be doing something similar, as long as you don’t create a controversy or a case over whether they’re infringing it, they can’t take you to federal district court and try to get it invalidated.

Now, this isn’t really something you need to worry about so much with copyright, because those are sort of set in stone and much harder to invalidate. But trademarks and patents in particular can end up getting challenged in federal district court. Be careful about creating a case or controversy unless you’re fully prepared to litigate. Thanks for watching!