April 2015

Twentieth Century Fox Television has filed a lawsuit asking that it be allowed to continue to use “Empire” as the title of one of its television dramas. This all started when a record label, Empire Distribution, sent letters to Fox demanding that it pay them $8 million for the use of the term “Empire.” Empire Distribution, an actual record label, claims that the company portrayed in the television drama is “functioning as a record label in the real world.”

Last month, a Wisconsin jury ruled that Blackhawk Network, a provider of prepaid gift cards, digital products and other telecom products, had infringed two claims of a patent held by InComm, a prepaid product and transaction services company. To Blackhawk’s credit, they took their medicine, and rather than blaming someone else, apologized to the jury for infringement of the InComm patent.