Intellectual Property Law

XBox Player Escapes Criminal Charges for Cracking Gaming Codes

Posted on December 10, 2010
On December 2, 2010, criminal charges were dismissed against a defendant in California who was facing up to 10 years in prison for running a business circumventing security measures for Xbox gaming systems. Matthew Crippen had been charged with two counts of breaching anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by modifying gaming consoles to play pirated games...

SAP Ordered to Pay Oracle $1.3 Billion in Damages

Posted on December 10, 2010
In a highly publicized case, SAP has been ordered to pay Oracle $1.3 billion for a SAP subsidiary?s theft of customer-support documents and software in an attempt to hijack Oracle?s customers. This is one of the largest amounts ? if not the largest amount ? ever awarded by a U...

Efforts Ramping Up to Weed Out Software Piracy in China

Posted on December 10, 2010
The Chinese government and software stakeholders in China appear to be strengthening their attention to the problem of unlicensed software use. On November 30, 2010, the Chinese government announced that it would be inspecting all central and local government computers during 2010 and 2011 to ensure that all departments are using only properly licensed software...

Copyright ?Troll? May Be Scaling Back its Enforcement Program

Posted on December 10, 2010
In an earlier post, we examined ?copyright trolling,? an unsettling trend in intellectual property enforcement. So far, the primary culprit is the Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ) by way of Righthaven LLC, a copyright litigation specialist possibly created to work exclusively on LVRJ cases, which searches for websites that have reposted articles from the LVRJ without explicit permission to do so...

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Corporations Increasingly Confronting Social Media Concerns

Posted on November 29, 2010
No one questions the prevalence and increasing reliance on social media from a corporate perspective. Earlier this year, PR firm Burson-Marsteller released a study of 100 of the top Fortune 500 companies and found that upwards of 75% of the companies use blogs, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter to communicate with their clients or stakeholders...

DOJ Asked to Investigate Oracle?s Hardware Maintenance Policies

Posted on November 29, 2010
Many businesses that partner with Oracle to resell its server hardware or to host software solutions built on Oracle platforms are familiar with that company?s sometimes complex licensing rules. Many companies also are familiar with the fact that ?complexity,? as applied to those rules, often could be replaced by ?unreasonable? or even ?draconian...

Many Cloud Contracts are Missing a Critical Term

Posted on November 29, 2010
Cloud computing contracts vary widely depending on the type of service being provided and the market to which that service is targeted. Cloud services that are inexpensive or free generally present the contract in the familiar ?click-wrap? format that we all, at one point or another, have ?agreed to? (but that we almost never actually read)...

Facebook Parody Site Files Preemptive Lawsuit

Posted on November 29, 2010
Lamebook.com, the Facebook.com parody website, has filed a declaratory judgment action in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. Lamebook, founded in April 2009, defines itself as a, ?fun humor blog that allows us to all share and marvel at the funny, ridiculous, and outright crazy posts that can be found on your favorite social networking site...

NLRB Complaint is a Warning to Companies Policing Social Media Use

Posted on November 29, 2010
Early this month, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a press release regarding a complaint issued by the Board?s Hartford regional office against a company that terminated an employee who ?posted negative remarks about her supervisor on her Facebook page...

ivi v. Broadcasters & Content Owners-Old Arguments Born Again

Posted on November 11, 2010
New media technologies always will create unforeseen challenges for copyright law. For example, in the 1950s and 60s cable television providers battled broadcasters over the cable operators? right to re-transmit broadcast television signals to cable subscribers...

Trademark ?Bullies? may be in the USPTO?s Sights

Posted on November 11, 2010
A business owner?s perception of vigorous trademark enforcement in many cases depends entirely on whether he or she was last on the passing end or the receiving end of a cease & desist letter. For businesses that have been accused of trademark infringement, those allegations often seem to be nothing but overreaching by trademark owners trying to make a quick buck based on an unintentional and harmless oversight...

Is Your Affiliate Licensed Under Your Microsoft Agreements?

Posted on November 11, 2010
Entering into a Microsoft Enterprise or Select agreement can be an effective way for companies with large and predictable software needs to reduce IT costs. However, Enterprise and Select agreements may include restrictions on an affiliate?s ability to use software licensed under those agreements...

BlueCross BlueShield Hit with Price-Fixing Lawsuit

Posted on November 11, 2010
On October 29, 2010, health insurance giant BlueCross BlueShield?s Michigan unit was sued for illegal price-fixing under the Sherman Act by Michigan plaintiffs seeking class-action certification. A copy of the complaint is available here. In their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that BCBS forced hospitals to include ?most favored nation? or ?MFN? clauses in their provider contracts, under which the hospitals allegedly agreed to charge other commercial insurers either at least as much as ? or more than ? they charged BCBS for the same services, thereby giving BCBS a competitive advantage in the marketplace...

Using Social Networking Sites in Commercial or Legal Contexts Can Be Risky

Posted on October 08, 2010
Social networking web sites have become an emerging conduit for small companies to recruit and conduct business. However, while some companies find this to be a successful means to expand business opportunities, others, such as Mark One Financial, have discovered...

Buying and Selling Software on eBay is Risky Business

Posted on October 08, 2010
A recent 9th Circuit ruling overrules a series of trial court results from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and reiterates the dangers of buying and selling software on eBay and other resale websites. Typically, the...

How Not to Be a Trademark Troll

Posted on October 08, 2010
Most of us have heard of patent trolls. Recently, we have seen the ascendance of the copyright troll. Trademark trolls, by contrast, probably shouldn?t even exist. After all, one of the principal concepts allowing a person to claim exclusive rights...

The Copyright Troll is Under Attack

Posted on October 08, 2010
Earlier this year, this blog introduced you to ?copyright trolling,? a new business model for intellectual property lawyers. The copyright trolling concept is simple: search the Internet for instances where another website has used portions or all of your original...

HP Sues Ex-CEO to Keep Him from Joining Oracle

Posted on September 20, 2010
On September 7, 2010, Hewlett-Packard sued its former CEO, Mark Hurd, in California state court for alleged breach-of-contract and threatened misappropriation of trade secrets. HP is seeking to keep Hurd from joining rival Oracle, which recently offered to hire Hurd...

Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Casts a Wide Net in New Patent Lawsuit

Posted on September 20, 2010
Interval Licensing, a patent holding company owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, filed patent-infringement claims on August 27, 2010, against eleven of the biggest names in Internet-based commerce: AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and...

Facebook Claims Ownerships of ?Book? and ?Face?

Posted on September 20, 2010
Social networking giant Facebook recently filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Teachbook.com, an upstart networking web site for teachers. Although Teachbook obtained a trademark in 2009, Facebook?s suit claims its incorporation of the word ?book? constitutes unfair competition and trademark...

Texas Attorney General Investigating Google

Posted on September 20, 2010
The Texas Attorney General?s Office is investigating whether Google violated antitrust laws with its search rank methods. The inquiry reportedly focuses on whether and to what extent Google manipulates search results to place certain links closer to the top of...

Considering the Cloud? Don?t Overlook the SLA

Posted on September 20, 2010
Listening to a discussion about ?cloud computing? may make listeners? ears cringe because of a sensitivity brought on by the unending cloud media hype, but computing in the cloud soon will be as mainstream as e-mail (coincidentally, one of the...

Google Comes Under Fire from Oracle in Patent Lawsuit

Posted on August 18, 2010
On August 12, 2010, Oracle sued Google in U.S. District Court in San Francisco based on claims that Google?s Android operating system constitutes an infringement of Oracle?s patents and copyrights related to the Java software development platform. Oracle owns the...

Many Cloud Computing Vendors Attempt to Avoid Regulatory Liability

Posted on August 18, 2010
Both state and federal governments are seeking ways to ensure citizens? personal information is secure and remains private, but the laws vary wildly and are sometimes frustratingly complex. For businesses, it is not always clear which laws, if any, the...

Lawsuits Against Gripe Sites Can Backfire

Posted on August 18, 2010
Web sites catering to online reviews of businesses ? including sites dedicated to reviewing (some might say attacking) only one business ? have created public relations nightmares for many businesses. In some cases, the targeted businesses perceive the content of...

Proof of License in SIIA Software Audits

Posted on August 18, 2010
Like all audits, success in a SIIA software audit depends less on what you own and more on what you can prove that you own. Although not required by law, the SIIA takes the position that a target company is...

AOL Loses Trademark Injunction Battle

Posted on August 18, 2010
In Advertise.com, Inc. v. AOL Advertising, Inc., 2010 WL 3001980 (9th Cir. 2010), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit partially reversed a trial court decision granting AOL an injunction against Advertise.com. In August 2009, AOL ? which owns....

Patent Lawsuit May Cause Negative Feedback for eBay

Posted on August 10, 2010
On July 13, 2010, online auction giant eBay, Inc. was sued for $3.8 billion in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware by XPRT Ventures, LLC, on claims that eBay incorporated XPRT?s patented business method processes in...

Introducing The Copyright Troll ? What He Is And How To Avoid Him

Posted on August 10, 2010
A new type of copyright lawyer has arrived on the intellectual property scene?not terribly good news for bloggers or online media outfits. Righthaven LLC CEO Steve Gibson is on the attack, beginning a campaign this past March against bloggers and...

Eating and Drinking Establishments Sued for Music Copyright Infringement

Posted on August 10, 2010
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) recently filed copyright infringement actions against 21 bars, nightclubs, and restaurants nationwide. ASCAP claims in its press release that the establishments ?either publicly performed the copyrighted musical works of ASCAP?s songwriter,...

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