• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS

Supreme Court of the United States 

Caraco Pharmaceutical laboratories, ltd Vs. Novo nordisk (Decided on 17.04.2012)

Patent infringement - Challenge thereto - Whether Congress has authorized a generic company to challenge a use code's accuracy by bringing a counterclaim against the brand manufacturer in a patent infringement suit

Held, The statutory counterclaim which this Court had considered enabled Courts to resolve patent disputes so that the Competent Authority could fulfill its statutory duty to approve generic drugs that did not infringe patent rights. Text and context of the provision demonstrated that a generic company could employ the counterclaim to challenge a brand's overbroad use code. Hence, this Court accordingly held that Petitioner might bring a counterclaim seeking to "correct" Respondent's use code "on the ground that" the '358 patent "did not claim an approved method of using the drug"--indeed did not claim two. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was reversed and the case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

• Media and Communication Laws

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Minority Television Project Inc Vs. Federal Communications Commission (Decided on 12.04.2012) 

Ban by statute - Challenge thereto - Federal statute, 47 U.S.C. § 399b prohibits public broadcast radio and television stations from transmitting over the public airways: 1) advertisements for goods and services on behalf of for-profit entities, 2) advertisements regarding issues of public importance or interest ("public issues"), and 3) political advertisements. 47 U.S.C. § 399b(a)

Held, government's evidence in the present case showed only the size and effect of one class of advertising, traditional commercial advertising. That was the content of speech proscribed in subsection § 399b(a)(1) which proscription this Court today held passes "intermediate scrutiny" and which was upheld by this Court. But the government could not point to evidence that its fear of harm to public television that would come from allowing stations to air public issue and political advertisements is "real, not merely conjectural," much less that the portions of the statute which ban such political and public issue advertisements "alleviate those harms in a direct and material way." Turner I, 512 U.S. at 664. Thus, Court has strucked down as unconstitutional subsections 399b(a)(2) and (a)(3).

• BANKRUPTCY LAWS

United States Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit

Quigley Company Inc Vs. Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos (Decided on 19.04.2012)

Jurisdiction - What is the scope of federal bankruptcy jurisdiction over suits against non-debtor parties as well as the scope of a stay issued pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 524(g)(4)?

Held, Court has concluded that the phrase "by reason of," as employed in 11 U.S.C. § 524(g)(4)(A)(ii), requires that the alleged liability of a third party for the conduct of or claims against the debtor arises, in the circumstances, as a legal consequence of one of the four relationships between the debtor and the third party enumerated in subsections (I) through (IV). Pfizer did not argue that its ownership of Appellant Company was pertinent in any legal sense to the claims asserted in the Angelos suits. Indeed, as the District Court very aptly noted, Pfizer's ownership interest in Appellant Company was "legally irrelevant" to the Angelos suits' § 400 claims. Consequently, the API, modeled as it is on 11 U.S.C. § 524(g)(4)(A)(ii), did not enjoin the suits at issue.