Intellectual Property Law

From bitter rivals to budding friends

Posted on March 23, 2008
Roger Fillion Joint Lockheed-Boeing rocket venture called for employees of the new United Launch Alliance to create a new culture of cooperation. When their company opened for business, United Launch Alliance employees watched as a big jar was hauled out and displayed at meetings...

Monsanto, Greenpeace clash over GM brinjal safety in India

Posted on March 23, 2008
John B. Judis The MNC's seed partner doesn't want details of its safety test in the public domain. A case filed in the Delhi High Court will decide the fate of exclusive data shared by companies with the government. Companies, especially those in the pharmaceutical and agri-chemicals businesses, don?t want such data to be made public in order to protect their commercial interests...

NEW MEDIA STRATEGIES, INC., Appellant/Cross-Appellee v. PULPFREE, INC. d/b/a BuzzMetrics, et al., Appellees/Cross-Appellants.

Posted on March 23, 2008
941 A.2d 420 (2008) District of Columbia Court of Appeals. NEW MEDIA STRATEGIES, INC., Appellant/Cross-Appellee v. PULPFREE, INC. d/b/a BuzzMetrics, et al., Appellees/Cross-Appellants. Nos. 06-CV-1483, 06-CV-1541. Submitted Dec. 4, 2007. Decided Jan...

GLOBAL WATER GROUP, INC., Appellant v. Robert ATCHLEY and Aspen Water, Inc., Appellee.

Posted on March 23, 2008
244 S.W.3d 584 (2008) Court of Appeals of Texas, Dallas. GLOBAL WATER GROUP, INC., Appellant, v. Robert ATCHLEY and Aspen Water, Inc., Appellee. No. 05-06-00709-CV. Jan. 9, 2008. Rehearing Overruled Feb. 14, 2008. Background: Water purification corporation filed lawsuit against its former president and his competing water purification company, asserting claims for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of shareholder agreement...

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David Ruder Authors Book on Intellectual Property Investing

Posted on March 20, 2008
Beard Books is proud to announce the release of "Strategies for Investing in Intellectual Property" written by investment banker and lawyer David S. Ruder. Beard Books' latest title gives an overview of investment strategies into intellectual property assets of all forms (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and other rights), and aims to be an invaluable introduction to the subject for all types of investors, from private equity and venture capital investors looking at private deals to hedge fund and mutual fund investors looking at public market opportunities...

Greenstone Settles Lawsuit Over Trade Secret

Posted on March 20, 2008
NEW YORK, NY Greenstone Holdings, Inc (PINKSHEETS: GSHN) announced today that the Company and D&L LLC settled a lawsuit filed by D&L in the Circuit Court in Florida July 2004. The settlement resolves a long-standing dispute between D&L, Greenstone and the Inventor of a patent and two patent applications...

Tech worker admits stealing trade secrets for foreign sale

Posted on March 20, 2008
Sacramento Business Journal - by Mark Anderson An El Dorado Hills technology worker accused of stealing trade secrets with military applications and offering them to foreign buyers for six figures in cash entered a guilty plea in Sacramento Friday, prosecutors said...

BUILDING A PATENT PORTFOLIO STRATEGICALLY: THE COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Posted on March 18, 2008
From 2 No. 9 ADVSECOMP 6 Advising Start-Up & Emerging Companies Trade Secret Value If the process by which a company makes a product or offers a service is not readily ascertainable, that process may be subject to trade secret protection. Although for some inventions, trade secret protection is more desirable than patent protection, maintaining a process as a trade secret--as opposed to a patent-protected invention--is not without risk...

Kewanee Revisited: Returning to First Principles of Intellectual Property Law to Determine the Issue of Federal Preemption

Posted on March 18, 2008
SHARON K. SANDEEN Hamline University School of Law Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review, Vol. 12, 2008 Abstract: In 1973, the American Bar Association, Section on Patent, Trademark and Copyright faced a dilemma. For more than six years it had worked to develop a uniform law to govern trade secrets...

CYTODYN v. AMERIMMUNE PHARMACEUTICALS

Posted on March 18, 2008
72 Cal.Rptr.3d 600 (2008) Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 8. CYTODYN, INC., Plaintiff and Appellant, v. AMERIMMUNE PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., et al., Defendants and Respondents. No. B187661. Feb. 20, 2008. A patent licensor brought action against transferee of license, and transferee's officers and directors, for unjust enrichment based on alleged misappropriation of its patents and trademarks, and requested exemplary damages for misappropriation of trade secrets...

Voting data test is blocked : Manufacturer cites licensing violation

Posted on March 18, 2008
DIANE C. WALSH Newhouse News Service Sequoia Voting Systems, the manufacturer of New Jersey's vot ing machines, threatened to sue Union County if officials allow a Princeton University computer scientist to examine machines where errors occurred during the presidential primary, officials said yesterday...

Browser targeting for ads generates uproar in Britain

Posted on March 18, 2008
Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews How can an advertising platform best target its readers without knowing something personal about them? Today in the UK, there's a growing public outcry for the details on what, from one coalition's perspective, may be a trade secret.

Upcoming Books on Trade Secrets...

Posted on March 13, 2008
Trade Secrets and Confidential Information Security Risk and Misappropriation by Ryan Conion Publisher: Gower Publishing Ltd (August 28, 2008) ISBN-10: 0566086557 Global Secrets: Global Trade Secret Protection (Globalization & Law) by C. D. Freedman Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co (June 28, 2008) ISBN-10: 0754620913

Employee who misappropriates trade secrets from former employer's computer system for competitive gain not liable under CFAA, absent showing of "damage" or "impairment" to data or computer system

Posted on March 13, 2008
Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner An employee who misappropriates trade secrets from his former employer's computer system is not liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), absent a showing of "damage" or "impairment" to the database or computer system...

ND Ill - Intentional interference claim not subject to ITSA preemption

Posted on March 13, 2008
From our friends at JurisNotes.com CardioNet, Inc. v. LifeWatch Corp. Cardio sued LWC, Lehman, Ament, and Konarzewska (collectively "LWC") for misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims. The court granted in part and denied in part LWC's motion to dismiss...

Is Your Data Wide Open to Your Opponent?

Posted on March 12, 2008
Nolan M. Goldberg Information technology departments of sophisticated organizations are already aware that each party to a litigation in the United States is obligated to collect its own discoverable electronic information to be produced to the opposing party...

Lake County man sues Big Ten over TV network

Posted on March 11, 2008
Lorene Yue A Lake County businessman has accused the Big Ten Conference of breaking a confidential agreement when it allegedly stole his idea to create the Big Ten Network. Robert Welsh, who once donned the Penn State Nittany Lion mascot outfit, filed his suit on Wednesday in U...

Cash-for-kindness scandal rattles Wikipedia

Posted on March 11, 2008
Asher Moses The toughest two weeks of the career of the Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales, just got tougher, with a former chief scientist at one of the world's biggest technology companies claiming Mr Wales traded Wiki edits for donations. Jeff Merkey, a former computer scientist at Novell, claims Mr Wales told him in 2006 that for a substantial donation from Mr Merkey, he would edit his Wikipedia entry - which included details of lawsuits involving Mr Merkey including one brought by Novell alleging misappropriation of trade secrets - to make it more favourable.

Philips files LED patent lawsuit against Lighting Science Group

Posted on March 11, 2008
LEDs The former Color Kinetics, now part of Philips, is alleged patent infringement by LED Effects, now part of Lighting Science Group. The latter has responded with a complaint that alleges, among other things, misappropriation of trade secrets by Philips.

RIM wants to secure BlackBerry camera with a lock and key

Posted on March 11, 2008
IntoMobile Research In Motion is all about getting its BlackBerry smartphones distributed for fleet-use in enterprise environments. Unfortunately, that means that corporate users will have to opt for the camera-less BlackBerry 8800 series. It would be a bad day to have corporate secrets walk out the door inside some cameraphone's flash memory...

Trade Secret Jury Verdict : H & R Block Eastern Enterprises, Inc. v. Gelray Gainey

Posted on March 10, 2008
Plaintiff H & R Block of Missouri claimed that Gelray Gainey acted in contravention of their agreement, when Gainey sold his tax preparation business to H&R Block. H & R Block sued Gainey for breach of contract. Gainey did not answer the complaint, thus the case proceeded in default...

ALM's Law Journal Press Announces Publication of `Information Technology Litigation: Law and Analysis'

Posted on March 10, 2008
Topics covered include IT-related copyright, trademark, trade secret and patent litigation, including software/business method patents; proving infringement; Markman hearings and claim construction; disputes involving the Internet and emerging technologies; evolving privacy and data security considerations; electronic discovery, computer forensics and protective orders; alternative dispute resolution; and emerging areas, such as "click fraud," VoIP-related issues, and computer trespass.

Elton John requires $75,000 for AIDS charity

Posted on March 10, 2008
JAMIE KELLY Getting Sir Elton John back to Missoula for an encore performance comes with a $75,000 bill. That's how much money John and his agency are requiring the University of Montana to raise for John's AIDS Foundation, which has raised $125 million for AIDS-related work in 55 countries since 1992...

Fines rise in DUI software fight

Posted on March 10, 2008
Todd Ruger SARASOTA COUNTY -- Court fines have climbed to more than $500,000 against the company that makes Florida's breath-test machines, part of a legal fight that is stalling more than 100 local drunken-driving cases. Kentucky-based CMI Inc. faces the fines and the possibility of losing future sales as defense attorneys demand to see computer software that runs the Intoxilyzer 8000...

Ethical Limits on Investigations in IP Litigation

Posted on March 06, 2008
Jedediah Wakefield Intellectual property cases often require extensive up-front investigation. California trade secret plaintiffs must identify misappropriated secrets with "reasonable particularity" before commencing discovery, and plaintiffs in patent cases must often identify preliminary infringement contentions at the outset of the case...

Universities can keep marketing information secret

Posted on March 06, 2008
Amy Harder Open government advocates received a disappointing setback last month when the Oregon Attorney General's Office issued an opinion declaring that the state's two largest public universities can keep sports broadcast and marketing rights contracts confidential under the state public records law...

Former LG employee leaks $1b in top secret plasma info to Chinese manufacturer

Posted on March 06, 2008
Darren Murph We've seen some pretty shady dealings from disgruntled ex-employees in the past, but this one may have skyrocketed into the upper echelon of tales of corporate deceit. As the story goes, a 49-year old man known only as Jeong felt the need to copy over some 1,182 top secret plasma display technology-related files onto his personal drive before waltzing out of LG's doors for the final time in July of 2005...

Microsoft cracks open window on trade secrets , becomes more open-source friendly

Posted on March 02, 2008
Suzanne Deffree Electronic News Microsoft Corp http://www.microsoft .com today made significant changes to its business model, taking steps toward open-source initiatives and sharing some of its application programming interfaces (API) and communications protocols free of charge with developers outside its corporate structure...

R&D makes things better, stronger

Posted on March 02, 2008
Debra Duncan VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH Many of the products of tomorrow are being invented today in the Alle-Kiski Valley. Several of our Top 10 employers have research facilities here, in addition to manufacturing operations. Hundreds of people spend their day trying to find a better use for aluminum, a more sun-resistant deck stain or a better way to help diagnose a medical condition...

Will tomorrow's world still need designers?

Posted on March 02, 2008
Tim Leberecht Johanna Blakley, Deputy Director at the USC Norman Lear Center, will moderate one of the most provocative panel discussions at SXSW Interactive next weekend: "Will Tomorrow's World Still Need Designers?" Panelists include Alonzo Canada (Jump Associates), David Merkoski (frog design), and Helen Walters (BusinessWeek)...

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