Three recent cases from various U.S. district courts illustrate the need for a higher court to clarify the pleading standard governing claims of patent infringement. As previous posts to this blog have noted, trial courts have suffered from some confusion concerning the level of detail concerning alleged infringement that must be provided in a complaint. […]
Archive | May, 2012
Past Licenses for Patents-NOT-in-Suit Relevant to a Reasonable Royalty
Could Sprint, having licensed its patents in settlement of litigation, be compelled, in defending subsequent, unrelated litigation, to produce documents related to these licenses? In a word, yes. A magistrate judge granted plaintiff High Point’s motion to compel production of Sprint’s license agreements and expert reports, although denying the motion with respect to Sprint’s communications […]
Check Fraud Prevention Patent Passes Bilski Test
Saying the issue was a “close call,” a Missouri court has ruled that method and apparatus claims directed to using encrypted codes to prevent check fraud are patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Advanced Software Design Corp. v. Fiserv, Inc., No. 4:07CV185 (E.D. Mo. May 15, 2012). The question came before the Court on the […]
Date of Assignment Limits Standing for Patent Plaintiff
A defendant was entitled to summary judgment limiting the plaintiff to damages only for infringing acts that occurred after the date of the assignment. CSB-System Int’l., Inc. v. SAP America, Inc., No. 10-2156 (E.D. Pa. April 30, 2012). The holding in this software/hardware patent case was based on the principle that, ordinarily, a plaintiff has […]
Preliminary Injunction for Apple in Patent Fight Against Samsung?
In the ongoing smartphone/tablet patent litigation between Apple and Samsung, the Federal Circuit has agreed with Samsung on almost every dispositive issue related to Apple’s request for preliminary injunctive relief, but “almost” may not be enough to save Samsung from a preliminary injunction concerning at least one product. Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., […]
Bad Faith Supports Preliminary Injunction Under the ACPA
A motion for a preliminary injunction was granted to prevent continued use of the plaintiff’s mark in the defendants’s domain name where the plaintiff was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d). West Coast Corvettes Inc. v. MV Marketing Inc., No. SACV […]
Defining the Scope of a Perpetual Software License
A perpetual software license entitled a licensee only to use versions of the software created before the license agreement terminated, despite the existence of an escrow agreement requiring the deposit in escrow of “all updates” and “all revisions” of the software’s source code. Gene Codes Forensics Inc. v. The City of New York, No. 10 […]
Patent Infringement Notice Pleading Standard Not Met
By Charles Bieneman on May 9, 2012 in Civil Procedure, Litigation, Notice Pleading Patent Infringement, Software Patents
If every court adopted a bar for bringing a software or Internet patent infringement action that was as high as the standard followed by the court in Pagemelding, Inc. v. ESPN, Inc., No. C-11-06263 (N.D. Cal. April 30, 2012), patent plaintiffs’ lives would certainly be more difficult. There, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion to […]
Notes on the New Detroit Patent Office
This article was originally published in the May 7, 2012, issue of the Michigan Lawyers Weekly. Here is a link to my previous comment on the Detroit Patent Office. In July, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will open a branch office in downtown Detroit. You may have heard a year or so ago […]
No Venue Transfer from E.D. Texas: Federal Circuit Denies Mandamus Petition
The Federal Circuit has upheld a trial court’s decision to deny Amazon.com’s motion to transfer venue from the Eastern District of Texas in a patent infringement case. In re Amazon.com, Inc., Misc. No. 115, (May 1, 2012) (issued as non-precedential). The district court had denied Amazon’s motion on the grounds that the plaintiff’s documents and […]