Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
Blawgletter marvels at the audacity of people who make, import, and sell knock-offs of famous brands of what you call luxury goods — mostly purses and watches but lots of other high-end, show-off stuff, too.
We suspect they know that the wages of their trademark rip-off sin will run steep — but only if Louis…
Can you avoid your promise to arbitrate a dispute, or slow the process down, if you and the bad guy also have a lawsuit going on at the same time?
Nope. Promega Corp. v. Life Technologies Corp., No. 11-1263, slip op. 12 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 28, 2012) ("The district court's duty to compel arbitration…
All nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to wipe out patents that told doctors how to tell how much of a drug to give a patient. The patents' sin? They did little more than describe a "law of nature".
Prometheus Labs held sole rights to a couple of patents. The patents dealt…
Blawgletter adores trials. Let us tell you about our last one:
The other side thought the case related to theft of their 3D seismic data. They felt so strongly about it that at trial they asked for more than $70 million — for what they deemed misuse of their trade secrets.
But the court saw…
You can get a U.S. patent if you invent "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof" if you meet "the conditions and requirements" of U.S. Code title 35. 35 U.S.C. § 101.
The first of the four things the statute lists — a "process"…
Blawgletter's firm handles lots of patent infringement cases on a contingent-fee or hybrid basis. And by hybrid we mean either a fraction of hourly plus a contingent percentage, a flat-fee plus a kicker, or an hourly or flat fee with some case-specific incentive to get exceptional results.
Now we see a scholar who has looked…
Your patent claims a device that "attach[es]" to a "flexible" thingy.
Does "attach" require that the device touch only the outside of the thingy? Or can it also attach to the thingy's innards? And must the thingy flex "easily" or just enough to seem, well, flexible?
The district court ruled that the attachment element of…
You run a website that lets people upload videos. Some of the site's users upload clips that include songs. And some of the songs belong to copyright owners who don't like the idea of having people hear their tunes for free.
Blawgletter knows just how you feel. We also know the question you itch to…
The Eastern District of Texas got Volkwagen II and then TS Tech — a one-two punch that knocked some wind out of the venue's rep as a patent solar plexus (or should Blawgletter say omphalos?).
Today, the Federal Circuit rounded on another IP hot spot — the District of Delaware.
As it did…
Top legal writer Alison Frankel wrote a first class piece on Rambus's stunning loss this week of a price-fixing case against two chip makers that, ahem, had confessed to fixing prices. See .
Rambus accused Hynix and Micron ruined a sweet deal with Intel, which agreed to build Rambus technology into Intel chips. Micron and…