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Intellectual Property Law

BC Law Intell. Prop. & Tech. Forum

Technology and intellectual property law.
By Boston College Law School

Post Frequency: 0.3/day

Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 14:24:37

New Website Coming Soon

Posted on March 28, 2011
Boston College Law School’s Intellectual Property and Technology Forum is proud to announce that we will soon have a new website that will combine and streamline both our journal articles and blog posts! Check back in the coming weeks for the updated site.

Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Case Regarding University?s Intellectual Property Rights

Posted on November 08, 2010
The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in the case of Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. to grapple with the question of whether the University’s right to intellectual property funded by government grants under the Bayh-Dole Act can be “terminated unilaterally by an individual inventor through a [...

Avoid the Rainy Day: Survey of U.S. Cloud Computing Caselaw*

Posted on November 07, 2010
The BC IPTF Blog is proud to present a guest post by Fernando M. Pinguelo** and Bradford W. Muller.*** Please look for a full length version of this post as an article in the BC IPTF Journal in the near future. Cloud Computing, defined as ?a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to [...

Hells Angels Sue to Protect Trademark ?Death Head?

Posted on October 27, 2010
“The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.” ? Hunter S...

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How do intellectual property protections

Posted on October 06, 2010
How do intellectual property protections apply to furniture designs and other custom made items? CustomMade Ventures (which owns CustomMade.com) has created a cyber-marketplace that connects customers seeking (you guessed it) custom made furniture and other custom items to the artisans who make these creations...

The Right Information-Security Systems for the U.S.

Posted on September 22, 2010
There are two bills on the personal information data security issue right now: Rep. Rick Boucher’s draft bill, at http://www.boucher.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1957:boucher-stearns-release-discussion-draft-of-privacy-legislation-may-4-2010&catid=33&Itemid=41...

Patent Scoreboard

Posted on September 22, 2010
A scoreboard on universities and university-based laboratories in patenting their research in all disciplines within the United States. http://www.iptoday.com/issues/2010/09/the-patent-scorecard-2010-universities-.asp

Designers Get Fierce With Copyright On The Catwalk

Posted on September 17, 2010
An interesting news article that outlines some of the fashion world’s arguments for an amendment to US copyright law to protect their designers, while giving a few of the arguments against it. American courts have long viewed the fashion industry as utilitarian, not a creative expression, and therefore haven?t protected it in the same [...

Patent False Marking: Not Dead Yet

Posted on September 16, 2010
One of the biggest issues in patent law recently comes from the seemingly mundane topic of patent marking. Of course, very few cared about this issue until the CAFC decided Forest Group v. Bon Tool Company, a case in which the court interpreted the damages for false marking, codified in 35 U...

Toilet Paper Trade Dress Suit Rolls On:

Posted on March 08, 2010
On March 1, 2010, Koch Industries Inc.?s George-Pacific unit sued Family Dollar Stores Inc. for trademark infringement. In the complaint, Georgia-Pacific alleges that Family Dollar and its supplier, Sun Paper Co. of Duncan, infringed Georgia-Pacific?s trade dress for its Quilted Northern and Angel Soft toilet paper...

Number of International Patent Filings are Down

Posted on February 16, 2010
The number of international patent applications filed through World Intellectual Property Org’s Patent Cooperation Treaty fell by 4.5 percent in 2009 – an unprecedented decline. According to WIPO, filings by applicants in the United States fell by 11...

Federal Circuit Upholds Patent Infringement Ruling Against Microsoft

Posted on December 26, 2009
The Federal Circuit on Tuesday affirmed [.pdf] a lower court ruling that ordered Microsoft to stop selling its ubiquitous Word program and fined the company $290 million. A Texas jury previously found that Microsoft?s Word 2007 infringed a software patent held by a Toronto-based technology company, i4i Inc...

Disputin Bout Rasputin: Beer Trademark Woes

Posted on November 30, 2009
Brouwerij De Molen (Belgium) and North Coast Brewing (California) have reached an agreement regarding competing beer names. North Coast, producer of Old Rasputin, contacted De Molen, producer of Rasputin, in hope of stopping them from using the name Rasputin for their beer...

Summary judgment granted to Apple in case against maker of Mac clones

Posted on November 27, 2009
On November 13, U.S. District Judge William Alsup (N.D. Cal) granted summary judgment to Apple in its copyright infringement case against Psystar. As background, Psystar offers non-Apple machines for sale to the public that come pre-installed with Apple’s Mac OS X operating system...

How to guard Terms and Conditions agreements from being found unenforceable after Harris v. Blockbuster, Inc?

Posted on November 18, 2009
The U.S. District Court in Harris v. Blockbuster, Inc. (622 F.Supp.2d 396) denied Blockbuster’s motion to compel arbitration under the terms in the Click-Wrap Agreement that its customers were required to accept as a condition of joining Blockbuster online...

No Doubt Sues Activision Under Right of Publiciy Claim

Posted on November 12, 2009
The Orange County based rock band, No Doubt, has recently filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming that Activision, the creator of Band Hero (the latest of the Guitar Hero series), exceeded its contractual terms that allowed activition to use the likenesses of band members Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont and Adrian Young in the [...

Do Ringtones Played in Public Spaces Violate the Copyright Act?

Posted on November 09, 2009
In an attempt to collect additional royalties from Verizon Wireless and AT&T, ASCAP recently tried to persuade a federal judge that playing a ringtone on a cellular phone in public amounted to copyright infringement. Enforcement issues aside, In re Application of Cellco Partnership (09 CIV...

Germany?s Proposal to Protect Publishers

Posted on November 08, 2009
Publishers around the globe are suffering from consistent reductions in ad sales and revenue driven by decreased circulation. The most common target of the publishers? anger and frustration have been online aggregators. In the U.S., aggregators have been party to a series of lawsuits, most of which [...

Is peer review the future of patent examination?

Posted on October 29, 2009
It is no secret that the USPTO is overwhelmed with patent applications. Indeed, this was the motivation behind the now abandoned rules changes the office proposed recently. Inherent in an overburdened system is the likelihood of errors, especially by omission...

Google Tried to Settle Copyright Infringement Cases with $60 in China

Posted on October 19, 2009
What can $60 do in copyright infringement cases? Google thought this can be the settlement amount. Since Google launched Google Books, its online digital library service (www.print.Google.com) in 2004, the company has overcome quite a few hurdles in obtaining authorization to publish copyrighted works, including reaching settling agreement with the American Society of [...

Vermont Brewery Challenged by Monster Energy Drink Over Trademark

Posted on October 16, 2009
Rock Art Brewery owners Matt and Renee Nadeau received a cease and desist letter from makers of Monster Energy Drink (Hansen Beverage Company) to stop selling its Vermonster beer and drop its efforts to get a federal trademark for the name. Hansen claims use of the name Vermonster beer “will undoubtedly create a likelihood of [...

Controversial USPTO Rules Rescinded

Posted on October 08, 2009
The USPTO announced today that it will file a motion to dismiss in Tafas v. Kappos, the case regarding the validity of a controversial rules package proposed by the USPTO. This effectively marks the end of the rules proposed to help make the USPTO reduce its application backlog...

Looking to make a difference out of law school?

Posted on April 27, 2009
This woman did: Barbara A. Ringer, who joined the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress straight out of Columbia Law School, and 21 years later oversaw the passage of the revolutionary Copyright Act of 1976. At the time Ms. Ringer joined the Copyright Office, the 1909 law in place provided for 28 years of [...

Conviction in The Pirate Bay Case

Posted on April 17, 2009
Today in Stockholm the Swedish District Court handed down a $3.5 Million fine and one year in jail time for the people behind The Pirate Bay, a popular bittorrent tracker. While the people fined say they would rather burn down their homes than pay the fine, (Ars interview), it appears they will have to serve [...

Wyeth v. Levine - Are we in for a world of ubiquitous black box warnings?

Posted on March 24, 2009
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wyeth v. Levine held that FDA approval of a drug’s labeling does not preempt a state law tort claim for inadequate labeling. So what do you do if you’re counsel to a pharmaceutical company making physician-administered drugs? Put the biggest, scariest black box warning you can on every prescription drug [...

Pfizer Buys Wyeth, Industry Consolidates, IP Lawyers Rejoice

Posted on January 26, 2009
Pfizer?s purchase of Wyeth is big news for the pharmaceutical industry, and for big business in general. Because its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor comes off patent in 2010, probably ceding much of its $12.6 billion market to generics, Pfizer went looking to boost its pipeline in search of the next blockbuster drug...

A win for end users: Apple (finally) goes DRM-free

Posted on January 25, 2009
On January 6th, Apple announced that it will offer music from all four major music labels (Universal, BMG, Warner Bros. and EMI) for the first time as DRM-free downloads. This is a huge step for iTunes, finally catching up with the method Amazon MP3 has used since its inception...

A Shoveler?s Manifesto: Can I Lay Claim To That Parking Space?

Posted on January 22, 2009
Should I have a property right in the parking space I laboriously shoveled out after yet another New England winter storm? Can I lay any legal claim to that space when I leave it, such as by placing a marker of some kind in it? Should I be entitled to slash the tires or break [...

The Game of E-Discovery

Posted on April 21, 2008
An entertaining and informative piece on the “game book” for conducting e-discovery, using the metaphor of a basketball game. Practical and specific points and tips for anyone interested in the new world of electronic discovery. “[I]f you play hide the ball in e-discovery, and get caught, you may not only lose the case, but you may [...

Privacy in Web-Based E-mail

Posted on April 09, 2008
Given the way that the gov’t can discover your personal information–name and address–from your IP, if you care about privacy, then you should care about how your IP is revealed. Now this can be done in many ways regarding web browsing, but how about web-based e-mail? I’ve looked at Gmail and Yahoo!, and Yahoo! puts your [...

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