Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
Your mom asked you, when you told her you'd lost something, "where'd you see it last?" Right? And it worked? Maybe not right away but soon. Yes?
The folks at Absolute Software and Stealth Signal tried to save you from your mom's loving disdain by coming up with ways to track laptops that someone had…
A Seventh Circuit panel today upheld an award in arbitration.
The panel ruled that the arbtitrators didn't manifestly violate law or exceed their powers by finding that the parties jointly owned one patent "family" and that one of the parties solely owned another family of patents. Affymax, Inc. v. Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., No. 11-2070…
The joint defense agreement between Nintendo and Advanced Micro Devices made their talks about litigation private but also said the JDA and actions under its veil would not provide either Nintendo or AMD grounds to disqualify counsel for the other company.
An in-house lawyer for AMD left the company for a job as partner at…
Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you:
The other side thinks your client so plainly — and evilly — copied software source code that their lawyers can't imagine losing. They have such clear proof, they believe, they almost sneer at you. And the smugness infects all that they do in the case.…
The chain works like this:
The online hawkers of handbags bearing the label of a famous high-end maker get their website services from a firm that "hosts" the websites (running the servers, granting "bandwidth", and giving IP ("Internet protocol") addresses) — all for a fee. The hosting firm in turn obtains the servers, bandwidth, and IP addresses under leases from an outfit…
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate okayed the patent reform bill that passed the House on June 23, 2011. The now almost-law goes by the "short title" name "Leahy-Smith America Invents Act". The Senate voted 89-9 in favor.
The White House hasn't issued a statement about the Senate action, but on the eve of the vote President…
Blawgletter doesn't often give high marks to newspaper editors on the quality of the facts they offer in support of their opinions. The lead editorial in today's issue of The Dallas Morning News — on "patent trolls" — should thus not have come as a surprise.
Yet it stuns.
Start with the title. "Patent trolls get rich by…
Blawgletter's firm handles much of our work on a contingent fee basis. That means we share risk with our clients — and earn no fee if we don't help our clients get a good result.
What counts as a good result will vary from case to case. It often involves a money inflow, sometimes not…
Ronald Mann over at SCOTUSblog just posted Commentary: Tide turns for Federal Circuit in patent cases. He looks at the three-for-three record of the lone circuit that reviews patent law issues in the Supreme Court during the 2010 Term:
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Can you use images that have fallen into the public domain without infringing the copyrights in them?
Yes and no, the Eighth Circuit held today.
The case dealt with pictures that movie studios used to promote Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Tom & Jerry shorts. Art & Vintage Entertainment…