Blog

March 25, 2008 - Nortel has agreed to pay Ipernica, a tech-incubator company in Perth, Australia, $13.3 million as part of a settlement. Ipernica earlier settled with Juniper Networks, Cisco and Alcatel Lucent.

Ipernica claimed in its suit that Nortel and the other companies were using its Statistical Multiplexing (Stat Mux) technology without permission. Ipernica is currently suing seven more companies - including Ericsson and Nokia - for patent infringement in a lawsuit known as "Stat Mux II."

March 25, 2008 - Typhoon announced that it had expanded its touch screen patent infringement case against Dell, Inc. (originally filed in December 2007) by adding more defendants via an amended complaint. The new defendants include Xplore Technologies Corporation of America, Electrovaya, Inc. and Sand Dune Ventures, Inc. aka TabletKiosk.

March 20, 2008 - Continental Airlines Inc. has settled a patent lawsuit with Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing LP for an undisclosed sum.

Under the settlement, Continental will receive a nonexclusive license on a patent for interactive voice applications, including services offered by Continental in customer service provided by automated systems and live agents.

March 13, 2008 - IT Security vendor Finjan Inc. won a patent infringement lawsuit against Secure Computing Corp., but Secure Computing is appealing the verdict because it doesn't believe it infringed the patents and contends that the patents are invalid.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's chief technology officer, said the patents in question all have to do with proactive, real-time malware detection and mitigation capabilities that are built into his company's Web security products.

March 10, 2008 - GraphOn Corp., a publishing software developer, said Monday it is suing five big Web businesses for patent infringement: CareerBuilder, Classified Ventures, Yahoo, eHarmony.com, and IAC/InterActive Corp. GraphOn settled a lawsuit with AutoTrader in January 2008 and has also sued Juniper Networks.

February 28, 2008 - Procter & Gamble Co. won a patent infringement lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. over a generic version of P&G's osteoporosis drug Actonel that the Israel-based Teva wanted to market in the US.

P&G filed the lawsuit against Teva to enforce P&G's patent for risedronate, the active ingredient in Actonel. Teva had claimed P&G's Actonel patent was not valid due to the obviousness of the invention.

February 28, 2008 - EBay Inc. has agreed to settle its historic lawsuit with MercExchange over EBay's "Buy it Now" feature. Financial terms were not disclosed, but EBay will buy three patents from MercExchange related to fixed-price sales and related technology.

The lawsuit had a significant impact on patent law because the US Supreme Court, on EBay's appeal, ruled that EBay did not have to stop using the patented technology, thereby ending the precedent of patent owners automatically having the right to block the use of infringing products.