Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
If you want to jam a stick in the spokes of the turning wheel we call litigation, how do you get the most bang for your buck?
Here's how: You hire a lawyer. But you don't pay him. And then you fire him. You retain a new one. Ignore her bills. Let her go. Repeat…
Way back when, a long time ago, Company X granted Company Y a broad license to some of Company's X's patents. Let's call them the "Original Patents".
Company X later assigns the Original Patents to Company Z. But Company Z thinks the Original Patents didn't go far enough in making claims to the subject matter of the…
Fix in your mind an image — of an offshore drilling rig. One that looks like a big boat. You see the derrick. It sits atop and in the middle of the boat. And then you notice something odd. The derrick has two tops, from each of which a string of metal depends. What gives?…
Blawgletter wrote No More Mr. Nice Patent-Infringer Guy about five years ago. It told about how the Supreme Court and Federal Circuit had lately cleared the way for people to pre-empt a lawsuit for patent infringement by suing for a declaratory judgment first. And just last week we pointed out that someone who avails herself of the pre-emptive…
Say your dear client fears that a patent holder can hardly wait to sue YDC for infringement. YDC — a lovely outfit with lots of nice people — asks you what to do. You knit your brows, think deep thoughts, draw on the deep well of experience, conduct thought experiments, and come up with a…
Who likes contention interrogatories? Anyone? Anyone at all?
Blawgletter agrees. But Once in a Blue Moon they may matter. Ask DeAngelo Marine Exhaust, which lost its Best Defense as a result of paying them not enough mind.
Marine Exhaust Systems sued DeAngelo for infringing two patents. The patents dealt with systems for cooling exhaust that spews from the…
A great many of your bigger companies require new hires to sign contracts that convey to the employers any "Intellectual Property" that the workers "make or conceive" during the term of employment. Courts treat such assignments as valid in spite of the at-will nature of the relationship.
But what happens if a worker conceives an invention before starting the new…
The Federal Circuit today ruled that the Eastern District of Texas has the wrong idea about whether Rule 20(a) lets plaintiffs sue a bunch of defendants in one patent infringement case simply because they all infringed the same patents.
You have to show something more, it held — such as that the defendants somehow acted…
In the last 30 days, two U.S. courts of appeals have held (sort of) that no "settlement privilege" — a right to deny others access to the terms of your settlements with third-parties — exists.
In the first case, the Federal Circuit ruled, "in light of reason and experience, . . . that settlement negotiations…
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…