January 5, 2012 - Following its purchase of 2,000 IBM patents last year and its continuing efforts to buy Motorola Mobility for its IP, Google Inc. acquired another 200-plus IBM patents and patent applications in late December 2011.
January 4, 2012 - Hulu LLC, which delivers streaming video content on demand, has been sued by a company called Intertainer Inc. for infringement of a patent on online video streaming.
The patent, U.S. Patent Number 7,870,592, relates to a method of creating an interactive streaming video that allows users to view outside content such as advertisements before resuming the video at the point at which the user stopped watching. Hulu had argued that it doesn't make its viewers watch ads in an infringing manner.
January 4, 2012 - A health supplement company called Creative Compounds LLC settled its malpractice lawsuit with its former law firm, Adorno & Yoss LLP. The company filed suit against Adorno and one of its former partners, Thomas L. Peterson, for allowing several patent applications to lapse.
January 3, 2012 - On December 13, a judge in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles granted summary judgment in a case involving a claim of false marking. What made this case newsworthy is that the plaintiff in the case (U.S. Rubber Recycling Inc.) actually is a competitor of the defendant (Ecore International Inc.).
January 3, 2012 - A Chinese-born scientist who worked as a researcher at Dow AgroSciences LLC from 2003 to 2008 has been sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing trade secrets and sharing them with scientists in China and Germany.
January 2, 2012 - Several Chinese handset manufacturers have recently formed an alliance to counter litigation brought by big international smartphone-manufacturing companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.
December 30, 2011 - Apple announced that it has been granted a U.S. patent on the Multitouch technology that is integral to the iPhone. The new patent covers the oscillator signal and circuit necessary for sensing multiple touch events on a touch display.
December 29, 2011 - Two months ago, Oracle scored a win in its patent infringement suit against Google when a judge allowed an unsent email written by a Google engineer to be used as evidence (see our blog entry "e-Dirty Laundry").
December 28, 2011 - M-Edge, a company which makes e-reader accessories such as a case for the Amazon Kindle, sued Amazon for trying to alter the terms of a 2009 contract.
December 21, 2011 - A judge with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has delayed ruling on the patent lawsuit filed by Eastman Kodak against Apple and Research in Motion until the fall of 2012.