4 Nov 2014
The American system is unlike many others when it comes to paying the attorney’s fees of the winner in litigation. Patent cases have always been a little different in that the relevant statutes allowed for the district court judge to consider a fee motion in favor of the winner in a patent infringement suit. Until...
24 Sep 2014
We should all know by now that songs, movies, and books are copyrighted works. Every time we see a movie, for example, we are reminded of this by the “FBI Warning” stating that federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted motion pictures. And copyright owners take this seriously....
17 Sep 2014
Copyright Registration for Websites The first thing that comes to mind for many people when discussing the Copyright issues of websites are cases such as Napster and Grokster, where the website owner was found to have infringed on the Copyrights of others.[1] These cases, and many others like them, have made it clear that website...
9 Sep 2014
What Is a Copyright? What does it mean to copyright something? We always see the copyright symbol © on the second page of a book, on the bottom of websites, and in the bottom right hand portion of paintings and lithographs, such as Chuck Jones’ famous 1994 work of art with Daffy Duck and Porky...
5 Sep 2014
On September 3, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court’s finding that the claims to a patent owned by buySAFE, Inc. are invalid under 35 U.S.C. section 101. Perhaps more significantly, the Court of Appeals used the approach recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in...
25 Aug 2014
Inter Partes Review The America Invent Act (AIA) brought new changes to the way the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) conducts review of patents challenged by third parties. Some of these changes include new rules to institute an inter partes review of a patent with a new standards for showing of sufficient grounds...
24 Aug 2014
On August 22, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s findings that Research In Motion Limited and Research In Motion Corporation (BlackBerry) did not infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,970,917 (“’917 patent”), owned at the time of suit by MFormation Technologies, Inc. and mFormation Software Technologies, Inc. (MST). After a jury trial...
24 Aug 2014
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) introduced several new trial proceedings that are now available for reexamining or challenging issued patents. These procedures are an attempt to streamline the process of reviewing issued patents, and to minimize the costs to challengers or patent owners, by providing a less costly alternative to litigation. While...
22 Aug 2014
The issue of successor corporation liability has been the subject of many cases in California. When it comes to purchasing an existing corporation’s assets, you can never be too sure of the issues that will arise once the sale date passes and the agreement is complete. A corporate successor is a corporation that takes on...
22 Aug 2014
Standards for Third Party Review of Issued Patents The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act replaced inter partes reexamination with a new proceeding similarly called an inter partes review proceeding. This process took effect on September 16, 2012, one year after enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. Part of the changes implemented into the newer proceeding include the standard required...