Articles Posted in 2012

Today, we headed out in the morning to spot the Space Shuttle Endeavour as it flew over NASA’s Ames Research Center.

After quite a bit of waiting, we spotted the Space Shuttle Endeavour heading towards us. The Dumbarton Bridge is below.

In a Solomonic ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez recently denied a defendants’ sweeping Notice to Admit social media account postings by a personal injury plaintiff in Carr v. Bovis Lend Lease (read the decision below). In New York, unless a party objects to another’s pre-trial Notice to Admit, they run the risk of admitting something they don’t disagree with, potentially helping another litigant through inaction. In Carr, the defendants’ Notice to Admit sought to have plaintiff admit to making Facebook, Twitter, and other social media postings online, even though plaintiff only acknowledged having a Facebook account.

Here, Justice Mendez gave each party a little victory, and perhaps a setback too.

Facebook and Apple have been hit with another patent infringement lawsuit brought by small, relatively obscure research/technology companies. Yesterday, PersonalWeb Technologies and Level 3 Communications filed a suit against both technology companies in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The two plaintiff companies allegedly each own an undivided 50 percent interest in the patents at issue.

In the case against Facebook, the patents at issue are:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,978,791: “Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers”

Check out our summary writer’s picks of interesting opinions that have come their way during the past week.

Coleman v. City of Mesa, Supreme Court of Arizona, Arizona Supreme Court (9/7/12)
Civil Rights, Constitutional Law

Yesterday, the Regents of the University of California and Eolas Technologies, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Facebook in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The suit alleges that Facebook has infringed on four different patents owned by the Regents and to which Eolas has an exclusive license.

Eolas was founded by Dr. Michael D. Doyle, who, according to the company website, previously served as Director for the Center of Knowledge Management at the University of California – San Francisco. During his tenure there, Dr. Doyle reportedly led a team of researchers to develop technology that led to the 5,838,906 patent (“’906 Patent”) entitled “Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document.” According to the Eolas Technologies website, the patent “enabled Web browsers for the first time to act as platforms for fully-interactive embedded applications.”

The ’906 Patent has been the subject of prior litigation. In 2007, Eolas and the Regents of the University of California were awarded a $565 judgment against Microsoft. The award was stayed on appeal, and the parties subsequently settled for a confidential amount.

Photographer Christopher Boffoli has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claiming infringement of copyrighted photographs. The complaint alleges that “Twitter users copied numerous photographs from the Disparity Series without license or permission from Boffoli . . . . [and] were hosted either on Twitter or on third-party servers.”

Boffoli claims that Twitter could have removed the copyrighted photos from its own servers or “disable[d] each Tweet advertising or linking to” the photographs on its own or third-party servers.

Twitter’s Copyright Policy states that “We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us.” However, according to Boffoli’s complaint, despite repeated requests that Twitter take down the copyrighted materials, “Twitter has not removed or disabled access to the [copyrighted photos].”

Pinterest filed a complaint at the end of August in the Northern District of California against Qian Jin of Nanjing, China, for cyberpiracy, trademark infringement and false designation of origin, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.  Specifically, Pinterest claims that Qian purchased dozens of “infringing” domain names that are nearly identical and confusingly similar to pinterest.com, and uses them purely for online advertisements.  Pinterest also alleges that Qian applied to register PINTEREST and PINTERESTS as trademarks in the United States in bad faith, stating that he had full knowledge of Pinterest’s brand and services.

On August 31, View 360 Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corp., filed a lawsuit against Google, Inc., alleging that Google’s Street View feature infringed on the following patents:

• 6,157,385: “Method of and apparatus for performing perspective transformation of visible stimuli”
• 6,323,862: “Apparatus for generating and interactively viewing spherical image data and memory thereof”
• 6,243,099: “Method for interactive viewing full-surround image data and apparatus therefor”
• 6,731,284: “Method of and apparatus for performing perspective transformation of visible stimuli”
• 8,077,176: “Method for interactively viewing full-surround image data and apparatus therefor”
• 7,542,035: “Method for interactively viewing full-surround image data and apparatus therefor”
• 6,252,603: “Processes for generating spherical image data sets and products made thereby”
• 6,271,853: “Method for generating and interactively viewing spherical image data”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York and seeks damages, injunctions against Google’s continued use of the alleged patents.

Happy Friday! As ever, our Daily Summary Writers have been on the look out for interesting opinions to feature in our weekly column – below are two of note from this past week.

Christian Louboutin v. Yves Saint Laurent America Inc., US 2nd Cir. (9/05/12)
Intellectual Property, Trademark

Christian Louboutin, a fashion designer best known for his use of red lacquer on the outsole of the shoes he designs, appealed the district court’s order denying a motion for preliminary injunction against alleged trademark infringement by Yves Saint Laurent (YSL). The court concluded that the district court’s conclusion that a single color could never serve as a trademark in the fashion industry was inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., and that the district court therefore erred by resting its denial of Louboutin’s preliminary injunction motion on that ground.

Yesterday, Touchscreen Gestures, LLC filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google Inc. in the Eastern District of Texas. In its complaint, Touchscreen Gestures, LLC alleged that Google products, including the Nexus One, Galaxy Nexus smartphones and Nexus 7 tablet, infringed the following patents:

• Drag Gesture. U.S. Patent No. 7,184,031 entitled “Method and Controller for Identifying a Drag Gesture.”
• Single Tap Gesture. U.S. Patent No. 7,180,506 entitled “Method for Identifying a Movement of Single Tap on a touch Device.”
• Double Tap Gesture. U.S. Patent No. 7,190,356 entitled “Method and controller for identifying double tap gestures.”
• Scroll Window Screen. U.S. Patent No. 7,319,457 entitled “Method of scrolling window screen by means of controlling electronic device.”