Grabbing Customers' Copyrights
March 29, 2011
What's at issue is control, obviously, and the great lengths to which some will go to maintain, it even as they benefit from the wide-open, free-flowing viral information torrent of the Internet. These copyright acquisitions are not primarily motivated by the desire to exploit the works and make money, but rather by the desire to stop the public circulation of texts and images the new owners do not like.
Ninth Circuit Vacates Injunction In Advertising Keywords Case
March 29, 2011
Remember U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart's famous line about hardcore pornography? Stewart said it was tough to define, "but I know it when I see it." The quip came to mind after a ruling last month by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a trademark infringement case involving Internet advertising keywords. In essence, the Ninth Circuit concluded that there's no strict standard for determining infringement in the Internet age, so judges have to know it when they see it.
New Net-Use Tracking Tactics Capture Privacy Claims
March 29, 2011
The use of new technology makes peoples' efforts to keep Internet behavior private more difficult, has given rise to renewed claims from consumers of unlawful intrusiveness by Internet data-collectors, and has revived the argument that such behavior unlawfully violates privacy expectations.
IP News
March 29, 2011
Highlights of the latest intellectual property news from around the country.
Downstream Liability in Trade Secret Litigation After Silvaco
March 29, 2011
Last year, for the first time, the issue of downstream liability surfaced in the law of trade secret misappropriation. In 2010, a California appellate court held in <i>Silvaco Data Sys. v. Intel Corp.</i> that a software licensee did not know or acquire the secret source code the manufacturer used to make the product and, as a matter of law, it could not be liable for trade secret misappropriation.
Centocor v. Abbott Labs: Must You Only Preach What You Practice?
March 29, 2011
The Federal Circuit's decision on Feb. 23, 2011 in <i>Centocor Ortho Biotech., Inc. v. Abbott Labs.</i>, vacated a $1.67 billion verdict based on invalidity for insufficient written description. The case provides an example of when technology can be so complicated or unpredictable that the specification does not adequately explain how to practice the claimed invention.
Passing the Baton
March 29, 2011
As law firms and many other professional service firms including CPAs emerge from the turbulent economic environment of the past few years, they find themselves with an ownership group that continues to age and mounting concerns on how the enterprise will find the continuity to survive and prosper into the future.
Small Impact on Practice Predicted from White House IP Recommendations
March 29, 2011
When the White House's intellectual-property enforcement coordinator, Victoria Espinel, submitted a wish list to Congress in March recommending 20 changes to federal intellectual property law largely aimed at ramping up criminal punishment for IP infringement, IP lawyers said the white paper recommendations would likely have only a tenuous effect, if any, on civil IP litigation or patent prosecution.
