A patent challenger who defeats a patent wins spoils that it must share with the world, including all its competitors. This forced sharing undercuts an alleged infringer’s incentive to stay in the fight to the finish—especially if the patent owner offers an attractive settlement. Too many settlements, and too few definitive patent challenges, are the [...]
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A patent challenger who defeats a patent wins spoils that it must share with the world, including all its competitors. This forced sharing undercuts an alleged infringer’s incentive to stay in the fight to the finish—especially if the patent owner offers an attractive settlement. Too many settlements, and too few definitive patent challenges, are the [...] Under most circumstances, music writer Johnny Oxbridge would be exhilarated to open his MySpace inbox and find a message from DJ Showtime, a Los Angeles-based producer-rapper whose off-kilter beats—built on some of music’s most obscure sonic scraps—are the object of envy, scrutiny, and emulation by legions of independent hip-hop fans.1 A hip-hop enthusiast with a [...] Communication and social networks play a vital role in the modern world. The role and importance of social networks has been heightened by the advent of the Internet and the new “information age” in which modern society operates. The Internet has had a profound impact upon nearly every society, and it has increasingly assumed indispensable [...] The United States retail payments industry is in the middle of a transition in regard to information security. A substantial number of data breaches have occurred over the last five years, despite substantial compliance with the industry standard, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. There will need to be a move to a higher [...] In the past decade, a number of studies have scrutinized the Federal Circuit’s rate of reversal of district court claim construction rulings. To date, however, there has been little empirical research focusing on district court claim construction decisions themselves. Although district court statistics represent only a “slice in time” before appeal, they are nevertheless important [...] Not long after Google announced in December 2004 that it would include in its search database the full text of books from a number of leading research libraries, two lawsuits—structured as class actions—were filed by a group representing mostly trade authors and a major publisher. One of the key issues was whether Google’s project was [...] Google Books represents the latest attempt at the centuries-old goal to build a universal library. In 2004, Google started scanning books from libraries around the world. Although it made copyright licensing agreements with some publishers, it did not obtain permission from each rightsholder before scanning, indexing, and displaying portions of books from the stacks of [...] In a typical case of trademark infringement, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that potential consumers would be confused as to the source of a good or service, due to the defendant’s use of a mark (or in the case of trade dress infringement, the same or similar product packaging, design, labeling, etc.) that [...] The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) receives more applications today than it ever has before. What happens to those applications? Patent prosecutors all have stories and personal experiences. Until quite recently, however, this sort of “anecdata” was all that was available, because the law prevented anyone from ever finding out what happened to [...] |
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