On April 21, the Tile Council of North America (TCNA) submitted comments opposing a petition by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI) that requested that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) require manufacturers of flooring, cleaners, and footwear to label their products per an NFSI label and test products per NSFI-developed methods.
The World Floor Covering Association (WFCA) continues to advocate for flooring retailers in an effort to address the new U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) ruling that determines the definition of independent contractor and employees—an issue hugely consequential to the thousands of flooring retailers who hire subcontractors for their installation jobs.
Federal registration of the generic term “SPC,” which is used as an acronym for “stone plastic composite” flooring in the flooring industry, resulted in more than 16 containers of the plaintiff’s flooring being detained by U.S. Customs.
I4F, a group of companies providing patents and technologies to the flooring industry, announced that it has filed an invalidity case against Vilox’s US patent (US 11,421,425).
Unilin Technologies, the IP division of Unilin, announces the resolution of a longstanding intellectual property court case with Floors@Work, a Canadian importer and retailer of flooring products.
i4F, a group of companies providing patents and technologies to the flooring industry, announced an out-of-court settlement with Australian distributor, Complete Floors and its suppliers.
Pursuant to an agreement to settle certain lawsuits between WFCA and Golconda regarding their joint venture, WFCA has divested its interest in MBS, and Golconda will be the sole owner of MBS going forward.
Unilin Technologies has successfully defended an opposition against its European Patent EP 3294969 B1 (“the '969 Patent”). The European Patent Office dismissed all arguments regarding novelty and inventive step of the opponent in an oral hearing and decided that the ‘969 Patent was valid.
The following are excerpts from a conversation we had with Jeff King about some of the elements surrounding the Paycheck Protection Program and other topics including business interruption insurance.
