Patent Infringement News

November 22, 2011 - Western Digital, already affected by the flooding in Thailand which has caused a shortage of hard drives, was ordered to pay an arbitration award of $525 million to its rival Seagate Technology. The award is based on a finding that a former Seagate employee misappropriated trade secrets and other confidential information.

The $525 million does not include prejudgment interest, which has yet to be determined.

November 18, 2011 - Lemko Corp. filed suit against Motorola Mobility for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets. Lemko claims that Motorola hired an ex-Lemko engineer who had "access to and knowledge of Lemko's trade secrets" and source code, and that Motorola then assigned the engineer to create the position-determining technology that the company previously lacked.

November 16, 2011 - A federal judge in the Northern District of California denied Google's motion for partial summary judgment in its patent infringement lawsuit with Oracle America Inc.

November 14, 2011 - A company called SmartPhone Technologies filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, AT&T and AT&T Mobility for the infringement of six patents that originated with Palm and 3Com between 1997 and 2000. SmartPhone Technologies states that it is the exclusive licensee of these patents.

November 8, 2011 - A company called Hothand sued the popular daily-deal website Groupon for infringing a patent on a "subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants".

Hothand claims that Groupon's iPhone and iPad apps infringe the patent, as do its apps for Android, Windows and BlackBerry devices.

November 3, 2011 - Keurig, the company known for its single-serve coffeemakers, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the Rogers Family Co. alleging that the latter's OneCup product infringes two Keurig patents.

November 1, 2011 - Last week Klausner Technologies, Inc. announced that it had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Oracle Corporation. The patents-at-suit cover Visual Voicemail, which allows users of mobile phones or computers to visually identify and selectively listen to voicemail messages.

Oracle's enterprise messaging products allegedly use the patented Visual Voicemail technology.

October 31, 2011 - Eight new patent lawsuits were filed against Amazon.com in early September - and the proximity of the filings was partly a result of the America Invents Act (AIA) and its "anti-joinder" provision.

October 30, 2011 - Brian Hanna and Michael Nolan were sales managers with Groupon, the world's largest online coupon site, until about a month ago. Then they left the company and went to work for Google Offers - where, Groupon alleges, they took valuable trade secrets from their former employer.

October 29, 2011 - Verizon has been ordered to post a $145 million bond while it appeals the verdict in its lawsuit with a small tech company.