Federal Circuit Holds There is No ‘Presumption of Irreparable Harm’ on Preliminary Injunction Motions: What Took So Long?

The court then turned to irreparable harm, and this is where the reason for a precedential opinion became clear. The court concluded in Socket Solutions that there was no reason to depart from those holdings in the preliminary injunction context. See Wepner & Ellis, The Federal Circuit’s Presumptively Erroneous Presumption of Irreparable Harm, 6 Tulane J. of Technology and Intellectual Property 147 (2004). Not long after eBay, the regional circuits, which handle most trademark appeals, fell into line in following eBay in preliminary injunction situations. It took an act of Congress to restore the presumption of irreparable harm in trademark injunction proceedings, and Congress covered all the bases in doing so.