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Kickstarter Wins it’s First Patent Case

Judge Katherine Failla of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of Kickstarter that the US patent “Methods and Apparatuses for Financing and Marketing a Creative Work” granted to ArtistShare should be invalidated.

 

The dispute between the 2 parties started over 4 years ago, and although ArtistShare tried to convince the judge that they were not trying to own crowd-funding, the judge ruled that the patent was overly general.  She said that, the “defendants’ repetition of words like ‘particular’ and ‘specific’ in bold italics when referring to the claims in the ‘887 Patent does not make them so.”

 

The full opinion can be found here.

About the Author

Babak Akhlaghi is an adjunct professor at University of Maryland, where he teaches legal aspects of entrepreneurship. Babak is also a registered patent attorney and the Managing Director at NovoTech Patent Firm, where he assists inventors in protecting and monetizing their inventions. He is also a co-author of the "Patent Applications Handbook," which has been updated and published annually by West Publications (Clark Boardman Division) since 1992. One of his distinguished accomplishments involves guiding a startup through the patent application process, which led to substantial licensing opportunities that significantly enhanced the company's strategic value.

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