Defendant J2 Cloud Services (JFAX) hired plaintiff Greg James to write some software. Unbeknownst to James, JFAX filed a patent on the software. Many years later, James sued JFAX for correction of inventorship. JFAX argued that James didn’t have standing for correction of inventorship because he had assigned his patent rights to JFAX. The...
Read more →I have written once before about the disputing members of the band RATT. I’ll remind you again about who they are, mostly because this video makes me smile every time I watch it: WBS, Inc. claims to be the successor-in-interest to the trademark RATT, by assignment from the predecessor partnership that consisted of the...
Read more →I’ve written in the past (recursive link) about the phenomenon of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by photographers or their agents against textbook publishers. The textbook publishers allegedly exceed the license they had for the use of stock photos, either by exceeding the number of print copies authorized or using the works outside of the...
Read more →I previously reported on a case involving a missing patent assignment from an employee. The missing document didn’t prevent the Patent Office from issuing the patent though; the successor to the rights of the other co-inventors submitted the inventor’s employment agreement to the Patent Office and it thereafter issued the patent. However, the district...
Read more →I don’t think I have ever been so excited about an exhibit in a case before. It’s one that makes the heart of a person who writes about trademark ownership sing. Just look at it: Yes, it is a pawn ticket. I have looked at many documents claiming to be a trademark assignment and...
Read more →Plaintiff Janssen Biotech had a fundamental structural problem with an agreement. The document was called an “Employee Secrecy Agreement,” but in addition to imposing duties of confidentiality on its employees the agreement also served as an employee invention assignment agreement, as is commonly, if not universally, done. Janssen’s structural problem was in the definition...
Read more →If you are registering for or filing something in your client’s name, never take their word on the details of the legal entity. First off, many times your client won’t know the state of incorporation, thinking it’s the state in which they are doing business rather than Delware, or vice versa. Or, as was...
Read more →I previously wrote about a puzzling case, Small Justice LLC v. Xcentric Ventures L.L.C., with the defendant better know as Ripoff Report. The First Circuit has now grappled with it, although based on a revised district court opinion amended with a highly consequential footnote. To distill it down as much as possible, a lawyer,...
Read more →There is a chicken-and-egg problem with patent ownership and a patent infringement claim. I’d guess that most patents are assigned, that is, since under US law it is the natural person who is the inventor, patents will generally be assigned to a business for exploitation. That underlying assignment, a contract, is therefore a creature...
Read more →What a confusing ownership case (which perhaps means that the wise reader stops right here). Errors on every level, at the end of the day unrecoverable. The parties are Paradise Biryani, Inc. (PBI), Paradise Biryani Express, Inc. (Express), and Biryani Point Paradise LLC (PBB) on one side, and Paradise Hospitality Group, LLC (PHG) on...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
© 2013-2022 Pamela S. Chestek. All rights reserved.