Tuesday, January 14, 2014 1:00pm – 2:00pm The Intersection of Patents and Community Property: The Problem of the Ex-Spouse In a divorce, patents can be considered marital assets subject to community property laws, creating an unexpected and unwelcome tangle of legal issues for employers with a stake in the intellectual…
Porto Technology Co., LTD (“Porto”) filed a patent infringement action against Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless (“Verizon”). During the litigation, Verizon moved to compel communications between two of the plaintiffs, who are brothers, and counsel. As explained by the district court, the court began by looking at “communications between Ji-Soo…
Method Claims Applying Conventional Techniques to a Natural Phenomenon Held to be Patent Ineligible Subject Matter By Ali Shalchi The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found Sequenom’s patent claims on a prenatal diagnostic method to be invalid and not infringed by Arisoa Diagnostic’s Harmony Test product,…
In this patent infringement action between competing producers of satellites and satellite networking systems, ViaSat plaintiffs asserted that Space Systems/Loral infringed the ‘875 patent. As explained by the district court, the ViaSat plaintiffs are corporations that develop commercial and military satellite and digital communication technologies. SS/L is a wholly owned…
In this patent infringement action, Plaintiff NetAirus Technologies, LLC (“NetAirus”) asserted that Apple infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,103,380 (the “‘380 Patent”). The ‘380 Patent claims methods in which a “handset unit [ ] configured to a personal digital assistant (PDA)” wirelessly communicates over both a local area network (“LAN”) and…
Plaintiffs Kim Laube & Co. (“Laube”) brought this patent infringement action against Defendant Wahl Clipper Corp. (“Wahl”) for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,473,973 (“the ‘973 Patent”), which is titled “Disposable Cutting Head for Clippers.” After jury and bench trials, Laube filed a motion dismiss all patent related claims and…
As a result of Samsung’s alleged violation of the protective order, Magistrate Judge Grewal previously ordered Samsung to produce to Apple emails and communications by Samsung employees that would shed light on the scope of the alleged protective order violation and to make available for deposition various witnesses by October…
In this patent infringement action that was originally filed against a number of defendants, plaintiff Alexsam, Inc. (“Alexsam”) moved for a continuance of the impending trial date set for October 2013. To support the motion, plaintiff notified the district court that it had terminated its relationship with its counsel of…
by Ali Shalchi In Lewis v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., No. 4:12-cv-01096-CW (N.D. Cal. Oct. 17, 2013), an employee of Blizzard brought suit against the company for copyright infringement, alleging ownership of voiceover work used in the popular World of Warcraft online video game. The key issue on Blizzard’s motion for…
Unwired Planet LLC (“Unwired Planet”) filed a patent infringement action against Google and it originally identified 124 claims from ten patents as its asserted claims against Google. Unwired subsequently reduced the number of its claims. At the August 20, 2013 case management conference, the parties offered different proposals for further…