The Prior Art
"One reporter's notes on the IP beat."
Author: Joe Mullin is a San Francisco-based reporter at IP Law & Business.
Blawg Related Categories: Intellectual Property Law • Trials & Litigation • States • California
Recent Posts from The Prior Art
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Two big IP verdicts slip away from plaintiffs
Two historic verdicts, one copyright and one patent, were overturned this week. The recording industry's sole jury win in a music downloading case was overturned on appeal Wednesday. The problem was Jury Instruction No. 15,…
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Jones Day vs. the Internet
After more than a year on the IP beat, I had come to believe that we-own-the-Internet lawsuits were mainly the terrain of certain patent owners. But this month we saw the trademark owners step up,…
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Sealed documents in patent lawsuits: how much is too much?
Recently my fellow patent bloggers at PA Tracer wrote about the process of filing under seal in the Eastern District of Texas. They asked myself and ED Tex blogger Michael Smith to respond. I sent…
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Scott Harris patents alive and kicking; lawyer claims he invented GPS features
Scott Harris is in a good mood. And why not? He's free of the confinements of big-firm lifestyle, and has emerged from the Fish litigation with his patents. (The firm had tried to assert control…
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Neat trick: Facebook dodges Spangenberg's search patent
PA Advisors, LLC is an arm of Erich Spangenberg's patent-holding empire. Its job is to assert U.S. Patent No. 6,199,067, which claims the use of user profiles in Internet search; it was used to sue…
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Lawyers & Patents: Tempting Terrain
"Tempting Terrain," a story about three lawyer/inventors who have used their patents to unleash industry-wide lawsuits, has been published on Law.com and IPLB.com. In the course of reporting this story I discovered several other lawyers…
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It's time to think about buying an ad when...
On one level, Greg Aharonian's recent Patently-O essay criticizing a Wall Street Journal article is unsurprising. I'm not surprised that Aharonian doesn't like the media reporting on problems with the patent system. Nobody who reads…
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IP at the DNC
Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, told a crowd that patent reform needs to be pushed ahead, starting with venue reform. National Journal via 271 Patent Blog. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to getting a recording of today's…
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EFF's "Dancing Baby" lawsuit will proceed; can fair use be "self-evident?"
This afternoon, a San Jose federal judge cleared the way for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's YouTube "dancing baby" lawsuit, Lenz v. Universal, to move forward. The case has been underway for about a year, and…
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Hawk Attack
Gary Odom is an Oregon patent consultant who also blogs as Patent Hawk. Now he's sued his former client, Microsoft, in the Eastern District of Texas, saying the software company infringes his patent with its…