Business Briefs

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) welcomed an August 10 ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Oregon that Seirus Innovative Accessories infringes one of Columbia’s design patents. Columbia alleges that Seirus created its HeatWave products by copying Columbia’s patented Omni-Heat® Reflective products, which have earned industry-wide acclaim.

Columbia filed the suit against Seirus in Oregon in January 2015 accusing it of willfully infringing three patents relating to Columbia’s revolutionary Omni-Heat® Reflective technology. One of the three Columbia patents covers a particular design of a heat reflective material.
In his decision, Judge Hernandez found that “The overall visual effect of the Columbia and Seirus designs are nearly identical,” and that “The striking visual similarity between Seirus’s design and Columbia’s patented design is likely to confuse an ordinary observer, and therefore, Columbia’s motion is granted.”

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 FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLS) is hosting a special Teacher Appreciation Day across the country to help teachers save while they prepare for the new school year. The first 100 teachers at each Staples store on Teacher Appreciation Day, Wednesday, August 17, will receive a free sample kit with special coupons; plus every teacher with a valid teacher ID will receive 10% off of their purchase.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--National health spending in June 2016 was 5.2% higher than in June 2015, totaling $3.36 trillion (seasonally adjusted annual rate). For the first 6 months of 2016, health spending grew at a rate of 5.3%, slightly below the 2015 estimate of 5.5% made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), but modestly above the 4.8% rate that CMS projects for all of 2016. The health spending share of gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 18.2% in June, tied for the all-time high in our series, first hit in February 2016.

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