Patent Law

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...

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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...

Metaphor as Conflict - the Google Settlement from a Mediator's Perspective

Posted on March 12, 2010
As a mediator reflecting on the label 'Evil' attributed to the proposed Google Book Settlement (article by Tom McNichol in California Lawyer, Saving the World from Google: Public and private interests band together to fight a deal that, they say, would destroy competition on the Internet), I wonder under what alpha-tag Google might fall in Vickie Pynchon's new book, A is for Asshole, the Grownup's ABC's of Conflict Resolution...

Door Number One? Door Number Two? Or Door Number Three?: Part II

Posted on March 11, 2010
How do I choose the "right" mediator for my IP-related dispute? Yesterday I discussed the top three questions one should ask in order to select the 'right" mediator for your Intellectual Property-related dispute. Briefly, we discussed the importance of a mediator's training, experience and reputation...

Door Number One? Door Number Two? Or Door Number 3?: Choosing the "Right" Mediator?

Posted on March 08, 2010
How do you select a mediator in an IP-related dispute? In 2009, better than 96% of federal cases filed never went to trial. Roughly 12% of those were withdrawn or dismissed on motion. Conclusion: some 84% of all federal cases were disposed of by either direct negotiations or mediation...

Introducing Mary Zachar!

Posted on March 02, 2010
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND: Mary Zachar is a lawyer and mediator with a contemplative law practice specializing in business and copyright matters. After practicing business litigation in Los Angeles for 25 years and raising two daughters, she returned to her alma mater, Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, Indiana, to pursue an LL...

Why Pre-litigation Mediation Works best for All Authors

Posted on March 02, 2010
U.S. Statutory Remedies Unavailable to Unregistered Berne Foreign Authors, Making Pre-litigation Mediation a Good Strategy to Resolve Infringement Disputes for All Authors Whether you are eligible under Section 412 of the U...

Welcome Back to the IP ADR Blog!

Posted on March 01, 2010
Today is the first of March, 2010.  As you may have noticed, the Blog has been dormant for a while, as we worked out the details of the transition from Victoria Pynchon's eminent leadership of this Blog to my role as blogger-in-chief. We are in the process of putting together a new team of contributors, and you will see their names, bio's and photo's appear in the coming weeks...

The IP ADR Blog Continues

Posted on January 07, 2010
As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to more or less abandon the IP ADR Blog and pursue a more general blog about Commercial ADR, including arbitration and mediation, focusing on the business of business and the substantive laws with which business people and their lawyers must grapple, recommending litigation in some cases, arbitration occasionally and mediation and settlement (a lot!) One of the long-standing members of the IP ADR Blog and IPADR...

IP ADR Blog Merges with Commercial ADR Blog

Posted on December 11, 2009
I'm merging the IP ADR Blog with a new blog called Commercial ADR – Business Solutions to Justice Problems.  I'll continue to post articles to the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on matters of general interest to negotiators, including litigators who negotiate the settlement of lawsuits and some of my colleagues might post occasional IP ADR Blog articles here...

Von Dutch Tradename Settlement Gives Rise to Legal Malpractice Action and Questionable Mediation Confidentiality Decision

Posted on November 14, 2009
by Michael D. Young Here we go again.  A California appellate court has judicially created another exception to mediation confidentiality -- this one for alleged attorney malpractice occurring during the mediation but outside the presence of the mediator or opposing parties...

Insurance Coverage for Trademark Infringement Actions

Posted on November 13, 2009
Whether a commercial case can be settled or not often depends upon the existence of insurance coverage.  This opinion - answering the question "yes" for a trademark infringement action - was sent down by the California Court of Appeal today...

Are We Having a Conversation or a Meeting with the Choir: Cass Sunstein and Cyperpolarization

Posted on October 29, 2009
If you'd like to better understand what's really going on in separate-caucus mediation and, by the way, also in famous "conversation" happening in the blogosphere, do check out the New Yorker's Cass R. Sunstein and Political Rumors on the Internet by Elizabeth Kolbert...

Arbitration's "Down" Side: Two Years of Proceedings; $20 Million in Punitives; and, No Appeal

Posted on October 27, 2009
This just in from the Ninth Circuit -- In re Bosack -- an opinion affirming the trial court's refusal to vacate an arbitration award totaling nearly $20 million after proceedings that "lasted two years, during which more than sixty days of hearings were held, more than twenty witnesses testified, and over five hundred exhibits were entered into evidence...

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