Operators of a Canadian website, on which an anonymous user posted a copyrighted news article that is the subject of one of a rapidly expanding number of recent lawsuits filed by Righthaven LLC, must defend the case in Nevada, the U.S. District Court for the…

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A Russian company may challenge another company’s claim of ownership of the “Stolichnaya” marks for spirits as a district court improperly conflated incontestability of the mark with the…

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Subject matter jurisdiction existed in a generic drug maker’s declaratory judgment action against the patent owner, even after…

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 1 that, under the comity doctrine, a federal lawsuit brought by retail natural gas suppliers that challenges Ohio’s natural gas taxation scheme as unconstitutional must be dismissed because the action should have first been brought in state court (Levin v. Commerce Energy Inc., U.S., No. 09-223, 6/1/10).

“The comity doctrine, we hold, requires that a claim of the kind here presented proceed originally in state court,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg for the six-justice majority. “In so ruling, we distinguish Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88 (2004), in which the Court held that neither the [Tax Injunction Act] nor the comity doctrine barred a federal district court from adjudicating an Establishment Clause challenge to a state tax credit that allegedly funneled public funds to parochial schools.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito filed opinions concurring in the judgment, with Justice Antonin Scalia joining Thomas’s opinion.

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The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the inclusion of authors of unregistered works in a settlement of a class action copyright proceeding does not prevent a federal court from exercising jurisdiction leaves some unanswered questions that federal district courts will have to address in the future, according to participants in a March 22 panel discussion presented by Law Seminars International of Seattle.

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The U.S. Supreme Court November 30, 2009, agreed to review a lower court decision dismissing a “foreign-cubed” case that raises critical questions about the reach of U.S. federal courts and the U.S. securities fraud laws with respect to…

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