Articles Posted in Intellectual Property

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:

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.”

STMicroelectronics, a Swiss maker of Micro-Electric-Mechanical Systems (‘MEMS’) for accelerometers and gyroscopes in consumer products like iPads and iPhones filed a patent infringement lawsuit today against competitor InvenSense, Inc.

ST’s lawsuit alleges that Sunnyvale, California-based InvenSense is infringing nine (9) of the company’s patents being used in consumer electronic devices like gyroscopes and a “free-fall detection and free-fall protection system for portable electronics,” in addition to other MEMS patents.

A new patent infringement lawsuit accuses Apple, Electronic Arts, Target, Whole Foods, and other companies of violating a U.S. patent “for selectively rotating windows on a computer display.”

The lawsuit by Rotatable Technologies, LLC, a non-practicing entity (NPE), alleges that Apple iPhones and iPads violate U.S. Patent No. 6,326,978 for letting users rotate their device displays using the patent’s method.

Zynga, the online game maker of multimillion-dollar blockbuster games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Words with Friends, sued French gaming company Kobojo today for trademark infringement over the company’s Pyramidville game (see it below).

At issue are Zynga’s trademark claims to all games ending with ville, the French word for town or village. Sacré bleu!

Zynga appears to be facing an uphill battle, however. Last month the USPTO sent the company a suspension letter halting the game maker’s attempt to trademark the word Ville. on hold.

Today Oracle asked U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup to sidestep whatever verdict the jury ultimately reaches in the company’s Java code copyright trial against Google.

Oracle alleged that Google violated copyright law by refusing to license Sun’s Java software code, and allegedly incorporating copyright-protected source code into its Android OS for mobile devices. Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun in January 2010.

Oracle’s legal maneuver, known as judgment as a matter of law, argues that “no reasonable jury could find that Google did not infringe Oracle’s Java-related copyrights.” (Read the legal filing below)

“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.