Articles Posted in 2012

Judges know fair use and parody when they see it. Especially when it comes to South Park‘s “distinct animation style and scatological humor” as seen through the eyes of a 4th grade character.

That was the conclusion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Circuit today (read it below) when it affirmed a trial court judge’s July 2011 decision to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit over the viral “What, What (in the Butt)” internet video by the singer Samwell.

Here is why the decision is an important victory for parody, satire, and fair use on the Internet.

A continuing legal education company headed by Joseph Marino (inset, left), the legendary force behind a 65-year-old family-owned New York and New Jersey bar exam course, sued a former employee for alleged theft of “invaluable data” from his more recent CLE company’s business.

The Marino Institute of Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (‘Marino’ CLE’) accuses ex-employee Omar Issa (inset, right) of lifting Marino CLE trade secrets, breaching a fiduciary duty to his employer “by taking technology and…leaking confidential information and proprietary information” to his competing business while still working for Marino CLE

Days after Cisco sued TiVo in Silicon Valley federal court for a declaratory judgment over four patents, the maker of “God’s Machine” fired back with its own lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas, accusing Cisco of infringing the very same TiVo patents in dispute.

One of the patents being fought over is Tivo’s “Multimedia Time Warping System.” If you feel like doing the time warp again with your DVR, this patent lets you record one TV program while you’re watching another.

Here is a list and description of the four TiVo patents being litigated with Cisco:

The big case last week was Commonwealth v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs. out of the 1st Circuit, which found Sec. 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C. 7 (“DOMA”) unconstitutional. Section 3 denies federal economic and other benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts and to surviving spouses from those couples, by defining “marriage” as “only a legal union between one man and one woman.” “Spouse” refers “only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” The court applied “a closer than usual review” based on discrepant impact among married couples and on the importance of state interests in regulating marriage and tested the rationales for DOMA, considering Supreme Court precedent limiting which rationales can be counted and the force of certain rationales.

More coverage at the WSJ Law Blog.

We had some cases with interesting facts come up this week.

The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on providing survivor benefits to children conceived by in vitro fertilization, with frozen sperm, after the father died. In Astrue v. Capato, Respondent mother of the twins applied for Social Security survivors benefits for the twins, relying on 42 U.S.C. 416(e) of the Social Security Act, which defined child to mean, inter alia, “the child or legally adopted child of an [insured] individual.” The Social Security Administration denied the application, reading the act to entitle biological children to benefits only if they were qualified to inherit as a decedent under state intestacy law. The USSC upheld this interpretation, ruling that it was more in tune with the purpose of the statute, to provide for children who were supported by the deceased wage earner.

Facebook faces a lawsuit by new shareholders in the social networking company, filed less than a week after its IPO.

The shareholders allege that Facebook misled them by filing untrue statements in legal filings with the S.E.C., failed to prevent such statements from being misleading, and did not properly prepare the documents for prospective shareholders.

While another shareholder sued NASDAQ yesterday over the exchange’s acknowledged trading glitches, but this lawsuit specifically targets Facebook, board members, and investment banks.

That didn’t take long.

A class action lawsuit was filed yesterday against NASDAQ by an individual investor accusing the stock exchange of botching his Facebook stock (FB) orders on the day of the IPO.

Plaintiff Phillip Goldberg alleges that he “placed purchase and cancellation orders for Facebook’s stock that NASDAQ failed to promptly and accurately execute” last Friday, May 18, 2012, causing he and scores of other investors to suffer losses on their trades (view the lawsuit below).

Facebook’s IPO on Friday brought with it problems for NASDAQ.

The exchange’s CEO Robert Greifeld acknowledged that NASDAQ had a host of trading glitches on the day of the IPO, including a foul-up with the trading system’s ability to handle order cancellations.

Now, NASDAQ’s admission of its Facebook faux pas prompted an S.E.C. inquiry, and securities class action lawyers are prospecting for clients.

Judges often juggle hefty caseloads, particularly in intellectual property litigation.

Knowing this, lawyers serve their clients well by making concise, memorable, and effective arguments.

Take Cal Tech’s attorneys, for example. On Friday, they told the U.S. International Trade Commission (‘ITC’) that “RIM’s mobile phones and tablets are not essential to the public’s health and welfare and are hardly comparable to nuclear devices or burn beds.”

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down three decisions: Astrue v. Capato, Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., and Holder v. Martinez Gutierrez. In both Capato and Martinez Gutierrez, the Court relied on the doctrine known as Chevron deference in reaching its decision.