Intellectual Property Law

Panelists Ask: Who Owns Your Genes?

Michael Crichton, who fills a rather unique niche in turning science into literary fiction, says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office goofed in dealing with one of the most fundamental aspects of life. It let our individual genes be patented by drug companies and other enterprises. And that is thanks…

Aug 13, 2007 12:12 AM CDT

Real Suit Over Animated Sex Character

We’ve written about the virtual online world of Second Life—how lawyers take on second identities there, find business and create legal guidelines to rule their make-believe towns. Now the Associated Press reports on a real lawsuit brought by the creator of a virtual Second Life sex machine that seeks the…

Aug 10, 2007 6:09 PM CDT

J&J Is Cross Over Symbol License

A dispute over rights to the red cross symbol has led to a lawsuit and dueling press statements. Johnson & Johnson, the health-care products company, sued the American Red Cross yesterday, claiming the charity infringed its trademark by licensing the cross for commercial purposes. The suit seeks an injunction against…

Aug 9, 2007 2:22 PM CDT

Quelle Crime! Teen Held for Potter Book Posted en Français

A 16-year-old has been arrested and briefly jailed for allegedly translating the entire 759-page book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, into French and posting it on the Internet within days of its July 21 release. The teen, a high school student from Aix-en-Provence in southern France, is not named…

Aug 8, 2007 7:27 PM CDT

Lawyer Defends Qualcomm Representation

U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster didn’t name the lawyers who represented Qualcomm when he issued an opinion chastising the company for failing to turn over evidence in its patent infringement suit against rival microchip maker Broadcom. But the Recorder says the lawyers representing Qualcomm included Stanley Young of Heller Ehrman…

Aug 8, 2007 10:29 AM CDT

Qualcomm ‘Litigation Abuse’ Cited

A judge has ruled that Qualcomm Inc. waived its rights to enforce two patents for video compression and engaged in “aggravated litigation abuse.” The judge said Qualcomm had deliberately concealed patents from a standard-setting body and failed to turn over thousands of discovery documents in its patent infringement suit against…

Aug 7, 2007 7:16 PM CDT

Record Patent Award Overturned

A federal judge has overturned a $1.5 billion judgment against Microsoft that is one of the largest amounts ever awarded in a patent infringement suit. Alcatel-Lucent had obtained the award in a suit claiming that Microsoft had infringed two patents for the MP3 format for copying digital music files, the…

Aug 7, 2007 2:00 PM CDT

Drug-Price Law Overturned

An appeals court has struck down a Washington, D.C., law barring drug companies from charging excessive prices for prescription drugs. The D.C. law didn’t define excessive pricing. But it said a prima facie case could be established if the whosesale price of a patented drug was more than 30 percent…

Aug 3, 2007 2:28 PM CDT

Patent Rulings Favoring Defendants

Courts are citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court case to justify rulings in favor of companies defending patent infringement claims. The Supreme Court’s ruling in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. three months ago made it easier to invalidate patents for obvious inventions. The court said an invention is not…

Aug 1, 2007 6:17 PM CDT

IP, Going Once ... Twice

It was standing room only for business-suit types at Ocean Tomo’s Spring 2007 Live Intellectual Property Auction.

Aug 1, 2007 11:50 AM CDT

Judge Skeptical of Facebook Suit

Lawyers for the founders a social networking Web site will get a chance to revise their infringement complaint against their big-name competitor, Facebook Inc. But they may face an uphill battle, if comments by a Boston federal judge during a pretrial hearing yesterday are any indication. Judge Douglas Woodlock was…

Jul 26, 2007 8:29 PM CDT

Counterfeit Arrests a ‘Milestone’

A Microsoft lawyer who battles illegal copies of the company’s software sees “a real milestone” in yesterday’s seizure of more than $500 million worth of Chinese-made counterfeits. The FBI and Chinese authorities cooperated to seize the counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec software and arrest 25 people, the New York Times reports.…

Jul 25, 2007 2:56 PM CDT

Firm’s Archive Search Not Illegal

A Pennsylvania law firm has emerged unscathed from its trip through the “Wayback Machine.” Judge Robert Kelly of Philadelphia has ruled Harding, Earley, Follmer & Frailey did not infringe a company’s copyright by obtaining its archived Internet pages using a search tool called the Wayback Machine. Nor did the law…

Jul 24, 2007 1:20 PM CDT

Patent Profits Elusive

Patents may pave a path to litigation rather than profits, especially in the information technology industry, according to a study by two researchers. They found that patent litigation in the United States cost $16 billion in 1999, while companies reaped only $9.3 billion in patent profits, the New York Times…

Jul 16, 2007 5:40 PM CDT

The Day the Internet Music Dies

Playing music on the Internet gets more expensive on Sunday—in some cases prohibitively so—because of inaction by a federal appeals court. Sunday is the day that broadcast royalty rates will increase because of a decision by an obscure group of federal judges called the Copyright Royalty Board, the Los Angeles…

Jul 13, 2007 5:05 PM CDT