Suffern, NY, September 29, 2009 − General Patent Corporation (GPC), a leading patent licensing and enforcement firm, announced today on behalf of its client, Digital Technology Licensing LLC (DTL), that it has licensed DTL's cell phone patent to RSA 1 Limited Partnership (d/b/a Cellular 29 Plus) of Emerson, IA, and Mohave Cellular Limited Partnership of Kingman, AZ. Mohave Cellular is owned by Frontier Communications Corporation.
September 30, 2009 - Judge William Smith of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island has issued a judgment overturning an April 2009 jury verdict that hit Microsoft with one of the largest patent awards on record: $388 million. The decision comes as Microsoft awaits the outcome of its litigation with i4i, which could potentially cost Microsoft $290 million and ban the sales of some Word products.
September 29, 2009 - A jury in the Western District of Texas has awarded the Western Union Company $16.53 million in its patent infringement lawsuit against MoneyGram Payment Systems Inc.
Recently, two giant corporations spent millions of dollars in a courtroom argument primarily directed to the value of a “date-picker” – we’re speaking here about a “graphical user interface tool,” not a mechanical device for harvesting dates or an on-line service for matching up persons of opposite sexes. Lucent Technologies, Inc. et al. v. Gateway, Inc. et al.
September 23, 2009 - Social networking giant Facebook has been sued in federal court in Delaware for infringement of a patent owned by software manufacturer WhoGlue. WhoGlue sells web-based relationship management software used by groups such as alumni organizations.
Suffern, NY, September 22, 2009 − General Patent Corporation (GPC), a leading patent licensing and enforcement firm, has announced today on behalf of its client, ShopNTown, LLC, that a settlement has been reached in patent infringement litigation between ShopNTown and Landmark Media Enterprises, LLC (Landmark), a diversified media and communications company headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia.
A previous blog, “It Isn’t Kosher,” dealt with the more humorous – or possibly pathetic –
aspects of Rembrandt Data Technologies LP v. AOL LLC et al. The case does have another, more serious, point to make.
Some time ago we wrote about a court which rendered opposite decisions in two virtually identical cases. Now, we have two different courts rendering opposite decisions in what amounts to the same case.
In the first case, Hynix Semiconductor Inc. v. Rambus Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found that the defense of spoliation of evidence, raised by Hynix in response to counterclaims brought by Rambus, was not established and awarded Rambus nearly $400M in damages.
For most of our readers, it has probably been a long time since they heard the terms “Hula Hoop” or “Frisbee.” We mention them here not out of nostalgia – I, for one, could never keep the damned hoop from falling down – but because they are the focus of an interesting (to IP people and insomniacs) case relating to declaratory judgment actions. Wham-O, Inc. v. Manley Toys Ltd. et al.
As the reader may (should) remember, basically there are two kinds of patent claims: article claims¹ and method or process claims. Article claims are comprised of multiple article limitations, and method claims are comprised of multiple steps or process limitations. Both types of limitations are fine but, just as we are abjured to mix milk and meat, so too we are directed – albeit by a different authority – not to mix article limitations and process steps in a single patent claim. Rembrandt Data Technologies, LP v. AOL LLC et al.
September 7, 2009 - On September 4, it was announced that the US District Court, Eastern District of Texas ordered DISH and EchoStar to pay an additional $200M to TiVo as a result of what TiVo called "contempt sanction for continued violation of a Court-ordered permanent injunction."
September 7, 2009 - In a hearing on Friday, September 4, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) approved Microsoft's request to put the injunction against sales of its Word software on hold.
At issue in the suit is i4i's patented technology related to the use of XML (extensible markup language) as a way of encoding data for use in exchanging information between different programs.
September 1, 2009 - Enterprise software provider SAP has been ordered by a federal court to pay $138.6 million to Versata Software, a Texas-based company.
SAP's Business Suite products and other services was found to have infringed 5 Versata patents related to methods for configuring systems, pricing products in multi-level product and organizational groups, and multi-source transaction processing.