Patent Law

Why is the Countrywide data breach lawsuit dismissal important?

Posted on July 30, 2012
Another court has weighed in on the issue of what constitutes a cognizable injury in a data breach case. In a lengthy opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky in Holmes v. Countrywide Financial Corp. dismissed a lawsuit against Countrywide by plaintiffs who claimed that their personal information had been compromised...

How Secure Is Your Copy Machine?

Posted on July 01, 2012
Does your organization use a photocopier?  If so, what types of documents do you copy, fax, and email with it?  Do those documents contain proprietary information or personal information of your consumers/employees?  If so, then you should review a guide issued by the Federal Trade Commission, called ?Copier Data Security:  A Guide for Businesses...

Video Interview: Discussing the LinkedIn Data Breach Class Action Suit with LXBN TV

Posted on June 26, 2012
Following my post on the subject last week, I had the chance to speak with Colin O’Keefe of LXBN regarding the class action suit filed against LinkedIn following their recent high-profile data breach. In the brief interview, I explain the background of the case, what damages the plaintiffs are alleging and why it’s too early...

?The Disconnect? ? Let?s Talk About It

Posted on June 26, 2012
An interesting new study by CORE Security highlights a disconnect between the boardroom and the IT room in Corporate America with respect to how each view threats to IT infrastructure security.  The study found that, ?[m]ore than 60% of CISOs [Chief Information Security Officers] responding said that they are very concerned about their IT systems...

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LinkedIn Sued Over Data Breach

Posted on June 20, 2012
Well THAT didn?t take long!  Less than 10 days after LinkedIn announced that it suffered a data breach of approximately 6.5 million user passwords, a class action lawsuit was filed against it in California federal court seeking in excess of $5 million...

Should Companies Be Allowed To Ask Their Employees For Their Social Media Passwords?

Posted on June 15, 2012
Tom Barnett, Managing Director and eDiscovery Practice Leader for Stroz Friedberg, has written an article entitled ?What Happens on Facebook Stays on Facebook?.  The article provides a good overview of legislation passed recently by the Maryland legislature, which prohibits an employer or prospective employer from asking their employees or prospective employees for their social media...

FTC Action ? Companies Must Guard Against Software That Threatens Private Information

Posted on June 11, 2012
Flying ?under the radar? this week as a result of the high profile LinkedIn data breach, was news that the Federal Trade Commission charged two businesses with illegally exposing the sensitive personal information of consumers by allowing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software to be installed on their corporate computer systems...

Who?s The New Silicon Valley of the East Coast?

Posted on May 11, 2012
Maybe it?s because I?m in New York City for a few days this week, but this article in the Wall Street Journal and this one in the New York Times caught my eye.  New York City has surpassed Boston as the #1 tech sector for Internet and mobile technologies on the east coast...

Federal Data Breach Notification Laws

Posted on May 06, 2012
The title of this blog entry is somewhat of a misnomer because there is no single national data breach notification law that governs all information the same way as the state data breach notification laws do.  So, for the time being, companies and consumers are forced to determine which state data breach notification laws apply...

State Data Breach Notification Laws

Posted on May 01, 2012
In 2005, a company called ChoicePoint, which collected personal and financial information for millions of consumers, was the victim of a security breach.  Criminals stole from ChoicePoint personal information for more than 145,000 individuals.  The floodgates opened and a variety of other corporations and organizations revealed similar data breaches that had resulted in unauthorized access...

The Road to Somewhere

Posted on May 04, 2011
  Prof. Michael Moffit, in last Friday's Indisputably blog, posted a piece about a mediated settlement between former Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, and Talking Heads leader, David Byrne over the unauthorized use of the song 'Road to Nowhere' in an election ad...

Negotiations 101 - By Speaker John Boehner

Posted on April 12, 2011
Speaker John Boehner showed his opponents how to negotiate. He used three standard but sophisticated techniques that those who are schooled in negotiations will recognize immediately. The first one concerned the opening offer. If you want around $40-50 billion in cuts, be the first to open, and open the bidding high, just outside the 'insult zone'...

An Interview with Bruce Patton

Posted on February 16, 2011
Eric van Ginkel and Bruce Patton, Tijdshrift Conflicthantering (Conflict Management Magazine) October 2010. In October of this year, Eric van Ginkel had an opportunity sit down with Bruce Patton, co-author of the books "Difficult Conversations" and "Getting to Yes", Distinguished Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project and Partner of Vantage Partners...

Hewlett-Packard v. Hurd - A Challenge to California's Delicate Employer/Employee Balance... or Just a Face-Saving Money Grab?

Posted on September 23, 2010
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Eric van Ginkel is presenting at the 83rd Meeting of the California State Bar Association!

Posted on September 20, 2010
Mediator, Arbitrator and Adjunct Professor Eric van Ginkel will be presenting at the 83rd Annual Meeting of The State Bar of California, on September 24 (Panel 40) from 8-10 am! Eric will be a member of the panel called "Mediation: Prepare, Present and Produce the Best Results for Your Clients"!  This two-hour session will include a live mediation and will provide litigators and other mediation participants an essential "to do" list for getting excellent results from your negotiations and settlement conferences...

Can Media Owners Save Themselves By Blaming Others?

Posted on August 13, 2010
  Ken Cloke in his book Mediating Dangerously asks: how can we transform conflict so other options emerge that do not require winners and losers? As mediators, we are asked to guide people through conflicts, shedding light so they can see and as a result move towards more creative and productive ways to conduct their personal and business affairs...

Speaker Eric van Ginkel is presenting at the Annual ABA Conference on Friday August 6th!

Posted on August 02, 2010
Greetings IP ADR Blog readers! Mediator, Arbitrator and Adjunct Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution will be a panelist at the Annual ABA Conference on Friday August 6 from 4-5 p.m. The panel discussion entitled "Maximize Your Success with Court-Connected ADR" will focus on how litigators can settle at the point of maximum benefit for their client!   Most IP cases settle--but often it is late in the litigation process after the money runs out...

Eating Pie and Trade Secret Theft - What's the Use?

Posted on July 16, 2010
It is not often a case hits upon two of our favorite topics: Trade secrets and pie. But when it does, mmmmmmmm, it's good to be an attorney. And for this reason, we are grateful to Justice Rushing who provided us with a little of both in his recent opinion in Silvaco Data Systems v...

California's Trade Secret Disclosure Statute Doesn't Apply in Federal Court - or Maybe it Does

Posted on July 14, 2010
It's been a little while since I have posted on matters relating to the IP ADR Blog, but perhaps I can start with California's special take on trade secrets, one of my favorite subjects. In particular, recall the state statute requiring plaintiffs to identify their trade secrets 'with reasonable particularity' before discovery can be commenced...

New ADR Services for TV-format related Disputes

Posted on July 12, 2010
Jordi Masdevall, Senior Information Technology Attorney at Baker & McKenzie's Barcelona office reports that the World Intellectual Property Organization's Arbitration and Mediation Center, in cooperation with the 'Format Recognition and Protection Association' (FRAPA), now provides ADR services in disputes relating to television formats...

"Spam-igation": A New Lever for Settlement?

Posted on June 18, 2010
The Google Book Settlement (GBS) raised the question of whether filing a class action can be an acceptable lever for obtaining IP licensing; that question remains a topic of concern with scholars and Amici continuing the dialog. See, Grimmelmann's Big View of the GBS here...

The US Supreme Court takes on Consumer Arbitration Issue

Posted on June 07, 2010
In February 2002, Vincent and Liza Concepcion entered into a cellphone agreement with AT&T Mobility. They had been attracted by AT&T's promotion of free cellphones when committing to a two-year contract. Then the Concepcions were presented with a bill for $30...

A USPTO Ombudsman Pilot Program, Now That's Using ADR in IP! Or is it?

Posted on June 01, 2010
On April 6th of this year, the Patent and Trademark Office announced its new Ombudsman Pilot Program for patent examinations. David Kappos, the USPTO's Director, states in his  that the program was established to assist in meeting the Agency's priority to improve relations with its stakeholders...

Threats, Bullying and Big: "Once You Are Big You Are Not Cute Anymore"

Posted on May 26, 2010
In reading the NYT this past Sunday, I pondered the article by Brad Stone, targeting Google's 'monopoly' in online search and advertising, posing the question: Sure It's Big. But is That Bad? Increasing governmental antitrust scrutiny of search giant Google's practices, which target Google's favoring of its own properties, begs the question of whether Big is Evil and can we trust Big – the same issue raised in the Google Book Settlement - is Big itself inherently Evil and what can Big do to be otherwise? Distinguished trademark lawyer and blogger Paul Reidl in his April 17, 2010, IP Alley post Counterfeiting, Civility, and IP Backlash impliedly asks the same question about Big Law as he ponders the IP Backlash...

The Gap: Being What You Know and Being Who You Are

Posted on May 24, 2010
Cultivating Qualities of Being Introduced here in my first post as having a 'contemplative law practice,' a few friends politely inquired – what is a 'contemplative law practice,' and what does that have to do with IP or mediation? So I have been contemplating and in this post, with the help of a few other contemplative lawyers, try to bring it all together – IP, mediation and meditation...

She Negotiates Blawg Review #263

Posted on May 04, 2010
She's She Negotiates, the newest blawg on the block, taking the baton from The Public Intellectual's brilliant Blawg Review #262, and getting ready  to host Blawg Review #263 for Mother's Day 2010 She negotiates Blawg Review. In addition to celebrating mothers, we'll be celebrating all women who negotiate (do you know any who don't?) posting Blawg Review #263 on all of She Negotiates' pages –  She Networks, She Resolves, She Succeeds and She Transforms, as well as on the She Negotiates posting page...

What if a patent settlement agreement risks being illegal?

Posted on April 23, 2010
Several weeks ago, I came across an exciting article by Frances Murphy and Francesco Liberatore of Jones Day's London office, that I wanted to blog about, but did not get around to. By pure coincidence, I looked at it again today, and concluded I still want to blog about it! Why? Because I believe it is an important subject that every IP mediator and every mediation participant needs to be aware of! The article alerts us to the fact that recently the European Commission began a process of checking whether patent settlements concluded among a number of pharmaceutical companies infringe EU Antitrust laws...

Update on Google Book Settlement: Second Copyright Infringement Class Action Against Google, Inc., This Time by Visual Artists

Posted on April 19, 2010
Update on Google Book Settlement: Second Copyright Infringement Class Action Against Google, Inc., This Time by Visual Artists The newest dispute in the Author's Guild Google Book Settlement suit (previous post from 3/12/2010) arrived on April 7 when a coalition of photographers and illustrators led by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Graphic Artists Guild, the North American Nature Photography Association, the Professional Photographers of America, and represented by Mishcon de Reya New York LLP filed suit against Google, Inc...

Copyright, the Era of the Author and the Statute of Anne at Blawg Review #258

Posted on April 05, 2010
Blawg Review #258 at Cathy Gellis' Statements of Interest recounts the glorious history and ignominious decline of the Statute of Anne and issues a call for change.  Take a look, you won't regret it.  Excerpt below. But the end result of this 300-year "evolution" is a law full of absurdities that in no way delivers on the intended goal of the Statute of Anne...

What if a patent settlement agreement risks being illegal?

Posted on March 31, 2010
Several weeks ago, I came across an exciting article by Frances Murphy and Francesco Liberatore of Jones Day's London office, that I wanted to blog about, but did not get around to. By pure coincidence, I looked at it again today, and concluded I still want to blog about it! Why? Because I believe it is an important subject that every IP mediator and every mediation participant needs to be aware of! The article alerts us to the fact that recently the European Commission began a process of checking whether patent settlements concluded among a number of pharmaceutical companies infringe EU Antitrust laws...

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