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…
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…
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…
The inventor from New Jersey, Thomas Sullivan, tried to charm a Tennessee company, Radio Systems, into paying him for a license to make and sell his invention. Radio Systems at length agreed to let Mr. Sullivan drop by to show them his device, which he called "Wedgit" and on which he held a U.S. Patent. But first he had to sign a Confidential…
You may have wondered why patent cases have seemed so vogue in the last decade or so for hot shot trial lawyers. Blawgletter would not presume to tell you the cause. But perhaps it stems from the fact that, as Willie Sutton said, "that's where the money is."
But that now looks so two days ago. …
Doing things out of proper sequence can require a do-over. But in law, as elsewhere, the do-over may come too late.
Just ask Abraxis, a drug maker that today lost a lawsuit because the company it bought patents from didn't own them at the time.
Abraxis signed an Asset Purchase Agreement with AstraZeneca in April 2006. …
Russian scientists come up with a way to make an ozone-friendly agent that helps prepare materials useful in making units that store hot or cold. They tell the American company that hired them about the results of their study. And the U.S. firm starts using the process that their Russian colleagues discovered.
Does the U.S. outfit qualify…
You call your friend's cell phone. You wait briefly as the system recognizes your number and also your friend's. Once that happens, in most cases, you'll start hearing either a busy signal (bawmp-bawmp-bawmp) or a ringback tone.
But, just as people may customize the sounds their phones make when calls come in to them…
The Federal Circuit looked at a verdict for $6.5 million this week and held that the jury meant to award more.
The case involved three patents relating to "transmission of data in telecommunications networks." Telcordia Technologies, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 09-1175, slip op. at 3 (Fed. Cir. July 7, 2010). One…