Lately we’ve been seeing an increasing number of trademark cases that revolve around the relative rights of different members of the same enterprise: a family of companies asserting a family of marks theory in Wise F&I v. Allstate Ins. Co., different chapters of the Salvation Army allowed to register similar trademarks in In re...
Read more →Plaintiff Advanced Video Technologies has been around the block a few times already. AVT claimed to be the successor to a patent for a video codec. It had successfully asserted the patent against other defendants but ran into some problems when trying to sue HTC Corp., Blackberry and Motorola Mobility. Its first attempt failed...
Read more →As we all know, standing is difficult in patent cases. There are two types of “exclusive” licensees (in my view, making jurisprudence very confusing). First is the “virtual assignee” who has essentially all of the rights of the patent owner and can sue for infringement without having to join the patent owner. Second is...
Read more →This is my sixth post (recursive link) about the STOLI case. The defendant, Spirits International B.V., claims to own the STOLI and STOLICHNAYA trademarks as a result of privatization during the collapse of the Soviet Union and is listed as the owner of the trademark registrations. The Russian government, acting through state entity Federal...
Read more →It is a simple result, but not one that is forgone. An entity, HELP.org, LLC, owned a domain name, directorschoice.com. A company called Director’s Choice, LLP,* brought a Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy proceeding against HELP.org for cybersquatting and won. Russ Smith, who owns Help.org, transferred the domain name to his own name and...
Read more →You have someone sign an NDA that says this: If you can’t read it, it says 4. Beverly Johnson shall not directly or indirectly acquire any interest in, or design, create, manufacture, sell or otherwise deal with any item or product, containing, based upon or derived from the information, except as may be expressly...
Read more →I have called Righthaven the gift that keeps on giving. In Righthaven, the plaintiff tried to obscure the fact that there wasn’t a true copyright assignment by putting the relevant terms in different agreements. Righthaven, a copyright troll, eventually got whacked for it by the 9th Circuit. Now, when defendants see any kind of...
Read more →Jay-Z’s win in a copyright infringement suit has been widely reported. Jay-Z obtained a license to use an Egyptian work written by Baligh Namdi called “Khosara, Khosara” in “Big Pimpin”: Namdi’s heir, Fahmy, sued Jay-Z claiming that “Big Pimpin” was an unlawful derivative work, infringing both the moral and economic rights in Khosara, Khosara....
Read more →The court: Exploiting the patent-in-suit in these cases, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,788 (the ‘788 patent), was AVT’s sole reason for being. The only precondition to Plaintiff’s fulfilling its singular purpose was its acquisition of title to the ‘788 patent. Obtaining ownership of the patent was AVT’s sine qua non, the only thing Plaintiff absolutely...
Read more →Every patent litigation starts with an examination of the chain of title, or at least it should. Often there are multiple inventors; every link for each one has to be there, and even the language of the employment agreement has to be just right. Even after that, every corporate assignment has to be done...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
© 2013 Pamela S. Chestek. All rights reserved.