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Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Seoul Semiconductor Ltd. and Nichia Corp., longtime rivals in the field of light-emitting diodes, are heading back to court in a new patent dispute.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Seventeen energy companies have bought a license for patents held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing LP related to automated call systems, the firm announced Tuesday.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Rambus Inc. has gained ground in its bitterly contested battle with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ahead of a September trial, with a federal judge granting summary judgment in Rambus' favor on three of Samsung's counterclaims that Rambus' former in-house counsel misappropriated confidential information regarding memory chip patents owned by Samsung, his previous employer.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Two Cisco Systems Inc. affiliates denied Monday that they approved an article that ran in the notorious “Patent Troll Tracker” blog and sparked a patent lawyer's defamation suit against the company.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
IVI Smart Technologies Inc. wants a lawsuit in which it accuses Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP of helping a competitor of an IVI unit steal its intellectual property transferred from federal to state court.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Honeywell International Inc. filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission Tuesday alleging that four Japanese companies are violating federal law by bringing automotive multimedia display and navigation systems that infringe six Honeywell patents into the United States.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
A federal judge has granted Facebook Inc.'s motion to stay a patent lawsuit filed against it pending a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision on whether to re-examine the patent in question.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
In the wake of attorney layoffs at other firms, Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP has announced that it is letting go an unspecified number of its support staff.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
As the dust settles from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in LG Electronics Inc. v. Quanta Computer Inc., companies in various industries are seeking creative ways to get around patent exhaustion when drafting license agreements.
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2008
Despite a steady influx of women into the legal profession, women are still underrepresented in law firm partnership ranks, according to the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession.
Monday, Aug 18, 2008
WineCommune.com LLC has struck a settlement deal geared toward ending its involvement in a patent case that an Acacia Research Corp. subsidiary brought against five e-commerce companies over a patent related to guaranteed or bonded online auctions.
Monday, Aug 18, 2008
A lawsuit filed by patent-holding company Aloft Media LLC over Web browser patents has one fewer defendant, after the company conceded that AT&T Inc. does not make the product at issue.
Monday, Aug 18, 2008
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against a Spanish stock promoter, accusing the company and others of carrying out a widespread scheme to illegally sell millions of shares of a small Washington technology company.
Monday, Aug 18, 2008
Microchip giant Intel Corp. has sued patent-holding company Negotiated Data Solutions LLC, seeking to invalidate patents related to computer technology it says N-Data is trying to enforce in violation of earlier agreements.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
Frustrated gamers who have had trouble accessing Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox online gaming service are expanding a proposed product liability class action against the software giant.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
A fortnight after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit nixed an order allowing Nokia Corp. to arbitrate its patent dispute with InterDigital Inc. over mobile handsets, Nokia has requested a rehearing with the court in the hopes of overturning the ruling.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
A federal judge has volleyed back to state court McAfee Inc.'s lawsuit seeking reimbursement of up to $12 million in legal fees it paid Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP to represent the company's former chief financial officer in a criminal securities suit in which he was convicted.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
When the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association launched its first annual career fair for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender law students in 2002, it drew about half a dozen mostly nonprofit recruiters. Six years later, a large chunk of the 150 recruiters slated to attend the event next month will hail from the country's top 100 law firms, signaling the increased focus that firms are paying to recruiting and retaining LGBT attorneys.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
Ottawa-based Wi-LAN Inc. has scrapped its claims against Texas Instruments Inc. in its ongoing suit that has rounded up more than a dozen electronics companies for allegedly infringing its wireless technology patents.
Friday, Aug 15, 2008
Upholding a district court's ruling, a federal appeals court has refused to allow British computer manufacturer Centerprise International Ltd. to proceed with a lawsuit against nearly two dozen memory chip manufacturers for alleged violation of federal antitrust laws.
As employers have revised policies in response to new technologies such as BlackBerrys, cell phones and the Internet, employers should now carefully review their existing policies, procedures and confidentiality agreements to cover social networking, says Martha Zackin of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
The opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Jacobsen v. Katzer is one of the few federal court decisions dealing with open source licenses and should be of interest to anyone who distributes or uses copyrighted works, such as computer software, under an open source license, says Albert J. Marcellino of Woodcock Washburn LLP.
The latest decision in Rambus is significant because it shows the appellate courts will not hesitate to insist on convincing proof of anti-competitive harm when the FTC pursues antitrust violations based on alleged misuse of a standard-setting process, say Randall L. Allen and Rodney J. Ganske of Alston & Bird LLP.
The decision to reverse the lower court's ruling and grant summary judgment in favor of Cablevision has far-reaching implications for companies involved in all aspects of digital content delivery, say Cathy S. Kirkman, Brian G. Mendonca, Jeff C. Ulin, Gary R. Greenstein and Raghu B. Seshadri of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.
Although KSR has been settled, Microsoft’s petition in the case addressing the Supreme Court’s view that the rationale underlying the presumption of validity is “much diminished” when prior art references are not disclosed to the PTO is likely the tip of the iceberg, says David O. Taylor of Baker Botts LLP.
The New York district court's recent order asking YouTube Inc. to turn over a record of every video watched at YouTube.com raises serious concerns about privacy rights and could have broad implications for Internet content and user behavior, says Peter H. Durant of Nixon Peabody LLP.
The Federal Circuit's recent decision on the interpretation of functional language in apparatus patent claims in Microprocessor Enhancement Corp. v. TI provides the clearest guidance yet on the interplay between claimed structure and claimed function — but still leaves several significant issues open, says Brent Yamashita of DLA Piper US LLP.
By re-emphasizing the four-part test, the U.S. Supreme Court in eBay v. MercExchange has forced district courts to take a hard look at whether an injunction is warranted in a situation where patent holders do not compete with the accused infringer and in fact may not even manufacture any product of their own, say Stephan J. Nickels and William J. Robinson of Foley & Lardner LLP.