Also known as: infringe · infringes · infringed · infringing · infringements · infringer · infringers · IP infringement
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
2 senses
An unauthorized exercise of another's exclusive legal right or interest. The interference commonly arises from use of intellectual property without permission.
An unauthorized exercise of another's exclusive legal right or interest. The interference commonly arises from use of intellectual property without permission.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
A governmental action that curtails or violates a constitutional right or liberty.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
A governmental action that curtails or violates a constitutional right or liberty.
Each sense below has its own examples, sources, and questions.
Ridge Eco sued Prime Sustainability in federal court after Prime copied Ridge Eco's climate maps without permission and used them in state agency filings. Ridge Eco asserted a federal copyright infringement claim along with a state unfair-competition claim arising from the identical maps and submissions. The court exercised supplemental jurisdiction over the state claim because both counts shared the same operative facts.
Plains Labs obtained a bench-trial judgment that Pacific Logic had infringed its data-compression patent. The district court found liability but postponed calculation of damages and usage data. Pacific Logic appealed immediately under the statute permitting review of patent-infringement judgments that are final except for an accounting.
Ironclad Industries transferred specialized equipment located in State X to Ivy Investments. A dispute arose over whether the transfer infringed a security interest perfected under State Y law. The court applied the local law of the state with the most significant relationship to the equipment and the parties rather than the whole law including choice-of-law rules.
A federal court may exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state claim when both counts arise from the same set of facts, such as unauthorized copying of maps that also supports an unfair-competition theory. The shared nucleus of operative fact satisfies the constitutional case-or-controversy requirement.
Yes. The Federal Circuit has jurisdiction over an appeal from a judgment that finds infringement and is final except for an accounting of damages.
State officials enforced a statute that effectively barred law-abiding citizens from possessing common handguns in their homes. Ivan Ivanov sued, claiming the prohibition infringed the individual right to keep and bear arms. The court held the restriction violated the Second Amendment because it burdened conduct the Amendment presumptively protects.
State officials refused to issue a marriage license to Imran Iyer and his partner of a different race. The couple challenged the statute as an infringement of both equal-protection and due-process rights. The Supreme Court held that racial classifications in marriage regulation lacked any legitimate purpose independent of invidious discrimination and therefore violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
State A enacted a statute forbidding any school from teaching a modern language other than English to children below the eighth grade. Irene Ingalls, a parent, sought to enroll her child in a German-immersion program. The Supreme Court held that the prohibition infringed the fundamental liberty of parents to direct their children's education.
Yes. The Amendment's command that the right shall not be infringed applies to state as well as federal action and presumptively protects the possession of common firearms in the home.
Racial classifications that infringe the right to marry receive the most rigid scrutiny and cannot stand absent a legitimate purpose independent of invidious discrimination.
…criminal abortion statutes were void on their face because they were both unconstitutionally vague and constituted an overbroad infringement of the plaintiffs' Ninth Amendment rights. The court then held that abstention was warranted with respect to the requests for an injunction. It therefore dismissed the Does' complaint,…