Joel Zand

“Trust me, my pungent friend. You’ll get what’s coming to you!”

Disney’s new copyright infringement lawsuit against an alleged eBay purveyor of counterfeit movies appears to be dispensing advice from Aladdin’s Jafar.

According to the lawsuit (read it below), Atlanta resident Michael Jones has allegedly been selling ‘obviously counterfeit’ Disney movies on eBay using the moniker “authenticdelivery.” Not surprisingly, Disney charges that the sales have involved anything but authentic movies from the Hollywood studio.

Enough already! That’s the message from Judge Richard Posner, the federal judge presiding over one of many patent feuds between Apple and Motorola Mobility.

Dagnabbit, Apple, Judge Posner is fed up with your legal team’s motion practice!

“I’ve had my fill of frivolous filings by Apple,” he wrote in a newly released court order (read it below).

The jury in Oracle’s Java code copyright lawsuit against Google began deliberating this afternoon in federal court in San Francisco, California.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave the jury their final charge today: 19 pages of instructions and guidelines to use in their deliberations (read it below).

Google lawyers claim that the Android OS is “substantially” different than Sun’s Java code, that it used free public domain resources when developing its mobile software, and even received Sun’s approval to do so.

Jerald Bovino, the holder of a U.S. Patent (No. 6,977,809) for a portable computer case made of ‘resilient material’ designed with ‘ribs,’ is suing Apple and Target, claiming that Apple’s manufacture and sale of iPad and iPad 2 cases (inset, right), and Target’s sale of the iPad Smart Cover, infringe his 2005 patent.

If you think that texting is so ’90s, guess again.

A new criminal case against former BP employee Kurt Mix is an important reminder that, while social networks like Facebook and Twitter may be all the rage, deleting work-related text messages from your mobile phone might get you in trouble with the law.

Especially if prosecutors can prove that you obstructed justice by hiding something from a criminal investigation. In Mix’s case, the investigation involved BP’s deadly Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (‘ITC’) issued a preliminary ruling today concluding that Apple iPhone and iPad wireless devices violate Motorola Mobility’s U.S. Patent No. 6,246,697.

Patent holder Motorola Mobility — whose acquisition by Android OS maker Google is still pending — holds this more than 10-year-old wireless method and system patent to reduce background signal noise in wireless transmissions.

The IP litigation between Apple and Motorola, however, is far from over.

Aerosoft GMBH, the German software company that makes the ‘Airbus X’ game, add-on program to Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, sued a host of unknown ‘Does’ in federal court, claiming the defendants engaged in copyright infringement via peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) file-sharing of plaintiff’s game.

The Airbus X might have been a game that convicted al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui would have liked to play, given his self-avowed goal of piloting Boeing or Airbus ‘Big Birds.’

A federal appeals court in New York reversed a lower court ruling in Viacom’s copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and Google over user uploads of thousands of popular TV shows like South Park and ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

“A reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website.”

The new decision (read it below) reverses the June 23, 2010 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granting summary judgment to YouTube and Google.

Facebook’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers told a federal court yesterday that convicted felon Paul Ceglia’s latest discovery requests should be put on hold, and that Ceglia’s lawsuit claiming a fifty-percent (50%) ownership stake in Facebook should be dismissed.

Lawyers at Gibson Dunn were emphatic that the court should not “perversely reward [Ceglia] for his ongoing efforts to derail the discovery process” by keeping his lawsuit alive.

Perhaps more importantly, they argue, Ceglia’s failure to dispute that emails he sent in 2004 to a then assistant attorney general at the Illinois Attorney General’s office “conclusively proves that the [disputed] Work for Hire Document is a fake.”

Facebook filed its answer and counterclaims against Yahoo! today in the Silicon Valley patent battle between the social networking giant and the fading portal.

Yahoo filed its patent lawsuit three weeks ago, and Facebook fired back a salvo of patent infringement counterclaims right back at the portal.

Facebook claims that Yahoo is violating the following patents: