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Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Equitable Life & Casualty Insurance Co. has accused rival American National Insurance Co. of infringing a patent covering a system that releases life insurance payments as gifts to designated beneficiaries.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Free-information advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused the American Society of Composers, Authors and Performers of attempting to cash in on performance royalties every time a copyrighted song snippet plays on one of millions of users' cell phones.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
A federal judge has rejected a bid by Skype Technologies SA and its parent company eBay Inc. to stay a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Net2Phone Inc. over Voice Over Internet Protocol online communications technology.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Another heavyweight has exited Performance Pricing Inc.’s infringement action, as the court dismissed with prejudice all allegations against Microsoft Corp., leaving Google Inc. and AOL LLC to face claims related to a patent for online marketing and transactions.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Canadian generics maker Apotex Inc. has fired off a declaratory judgment action asserting it is not infringing Eisai Co. Ltd.’s patents, in a move to secure federal approval for its generic version of the Tokyo company’s Alzheimer’s drug Aricept.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Europe's highest court has ruled that a Dutch brewer can continue to sell beer called Bavaria, rejecting a challenge from a group of brewers in the Bavaria region of Germany.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
A federal appeals court has stayed a permanent injunction barring Dish Network Corp. from infringing TiVo Inc.'s Time Warp digital video recorder patent, extending the temporary pause it put on the case when the satellite television provider first sought to overturn a $103 million contempt order.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
The defense of inequitable conduct needs reform, as the standard for proving the defense is perceived by many in the patent bar as being applied somewhat inconsistently right now at the Federal Circuit, says Joseph M. O’Malley Jr., chair of Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP's intellectual property practice.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP has asked a judge to enjoin subpoenas seeking its testimony in a post-verdict hearing related to a malpractice suit over botched technology patent applications, in which a jury returned a $72.6 million verdict against the firm.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. is facing a suit by two Bayer AG units over the Israeli generics maker’s plans to launch a generic version of erectile dysfunction drug Levitra.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Japan's Hitachi Ltd. and South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. have reached a settlement of their U.S. patent disputes over technology including plasma display technology and audiovisual products.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
ClearOne Communications Inc. is planning to appeal a federal court’s ruling trimming roughly $800,000 from a $10.5 million damages award that a jury handed the audio and video company in a case alleging former ClearOne employees stole trade secrets related to audio-conferencing technology.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
A federal appeals court has upheld a decision that granted a preliminary injunction against Marlyn Nutraceuticals Inc. in a trademark infringement case over the dietary supplement Wobenzym, but it threw out a recall order.
Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
Chadbourne & Parke LLP has hired Kenneth L. Johnson, formerly chief patent counsel for Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLP, to serve as counsel of its intellectual property group.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
Once the recession abates, we can expect an uptick in intellectual property litigation — particularly in traditional areas such as electronics and computers, but also in new areas like “green” technology where companies are bound to start bumping into each other on inventions, says Kell M. Damsgaard, leader of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP's intellectual property practice group.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
A group of 14 record companies — including Arista Records LLC, BMG Music and Virgin Records America Inc. — has won a judgment against commercial Usenet provider Usenet.com Inc., which allegedly tailored its service to fill a void left by now-shuttered illegal file sharing networks.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
A federal judge has rejected the latest bid from H. Lundbeck A/S and its partner Forest Laboratories Inc. to pare down a patent dispute related to the antidepressant citalopram, ruling that a lone letter from one of the companies' suppliers did not yield enough evidence to drop part of Infosint SA's infringement claims.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
A biotechnology patent-holding company has sued Pfizer Inc. alleging the drugmaker infringed patents related to components of Alzheimer’s disease research, including nucleic acid coding for the so-called Swedish mutation and genetically engineered mice expressing the mutation.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
A group of music rights holders has filed suit against Yahoo Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Microsoft Corp. alleging that the companies have infringed copyrights by offering songs for download over their online music services.
Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009
A federal judge has ruled that defunct video-on-demand service and Blockbuster Inc. subsidiary Movielink LLC did not infringe two claims of an American Patent Development Corp. patent on a method of limiting the use of a downloaded video program purchased by a customer.
As if it is not bad enough that employers have to monitor computers, phones and other electronic communications of employees, here comes the next wave of e-caution: cell phone spyware, say Tex McIver and Deepa Subramanian of Fisher & Phillips LLP.
Certain arguments made in a recent Law360 guest article — "Seagate, The Issue Of Willful Patent Infringement" — reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the objective prong of the Seagate test. The objective prong has nothing at all to do with what a reasonably prudent corporation does when faced with a charge of infringement, say Robert E. Freitas and Jason S. Angell of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
Eight months after the Bilski decision, courts are beginning to come to grips with defining the metes and bounds of the Bilski standard; but in many instances, no clear picture has yet emerged, say Carlos Perez-Albuerne and Margaret E. Ives of Choate Hall & Stewart LLP.
Although district judges often appoint special masters or technical advisers to help with technical issues in patent cases, they have only rarely invoked Federal Rule of Evidence 706 and appointed independent experts to testify at trial. That may be changing, says Dan L. Bagatell of Perkins Coie LLP.
The latest Federal Circuit Princo decision reinforces the lessons of its earlier ones: Patent holders that contribute technology to patent pools should ensure the same patents are available for separate, individual licensing, say Kevin M. Bolan and Stefan M. Meisner of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
Last month’s denial by the U.S. Supreme Court of a petition for certiorari filed by Aventis Pharma SA signals continued uncertainty regarding the state of the law of inequitable conduct, says Rachel K. Zimmerman of Merchant & Gould PC.
It is foreseeable that, if used strategically, the new Federal Rule of Evidence 502 should alleviate the burdens of costly electronic discovery and post-production privilege review and should ultimately reduce the billions of dollars spent each year in litigation to protect against the inadvertent disclosure of privileged materials, says Otilia Gabor of Miles & Stockbridge PC.
Trade secrets are the only major type of intellectual property not governed primarily by a federal statute. That should change, says David S. Almeling of O'Melveny & Myers LLP.