It has not been two years since the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Matal v. Tam – a case touching upon an issue near and dear to all of us – free speech. That case involved the situation in which, Simon Tam, the lead singer of the group, The Slants, sought to register the band’s name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The trademark office refused the registration on the basis that the word “slants” was disparaging.
Tam’s case went through the USPTO and the Court of Appeals before being accepted by the Supreme
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The Ongoing Ambiguity Over Which Inventions Are Patentable And Which Are Not – The Patent Office’s New Guidelines
By don kelly
On January 7, 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued new 2019 guidelines on how it will go about determining whether an invention is one which the law allows to be patented. If you have been following the news on this topic then you know that since the Supreme Court issued its Alice decision in 2014 businesses that develop software enabled inventions have faced great uncertainty as to whether the subject inventions are patentable. Similarly, businesses that own older patents to such inventions are loath to bring those patents to court on the fear they may be invalidated.
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WHAT IMPACT WILL MEDICAL MARIJUANA HAVE ON MISSOURI WORKPLACES AND DRUG TESTING BY EMPLOYERS?
On November 6, 2018, Missouri voters approved Amendment 2, the Medical Marijuana and Veteran Healthcare Services Initiative by a margin of 66% to 34%. It legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Basically, the amendment allows licensed physicians to recommend marijuana use to patients with any one of nine listed conditions and additional ones with a doctor’s approval. The listed conditions include: (a) cancer, (b) epilepsy, (c) glaucoma, (d) migraines unresponsive to other treatment, (e) chronic medical conditions that cause severe, persistent pain or muscle spasms, (f) debilitating psychiatric disorders, (g) HIV or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, (h) terminal illnesses, and…
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