Patent Law

Following Radiohead Good Mag Offers "Pay What You Want"

Posted on October 12, 2008
... and agrees to donate it to the charity of your choice. It's GOOD! h/t Freakonomics here. Sharing Paris iPhone photos - this at Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Sedona Discovery Cooperation Proclamation

Posted on October 07, 2008
Thanks to the recent Twitter entry of R. David Donoghue -- "follow" him here -- of the Chicago IP Litigation Blog, we here at the IP ADR Blog can bring you the Sedona Discovery Cooperation Proclamation.   Since I'm in Paris and David promises to post a piece on this in his blog tomorrow, I'll leave the commentary to him...

The 21st Century: It's All About Collaboration: Pick Up the Lawyers' Guide Today

Posted on October 04, 2008
The Lawyers' Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies Say goodby to quill pens and obstreperous adversarial posturing.  Join authors Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell in learning "Smart Ways to Work Together" in their Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies...

Blawg Review #179 Celebrates the Invention of the Ballpoint Pen

Posted on September 29, 2008
I remember the first time I laid my hands on a BIC pen.  I was in junior high school and the kids down the street seemed to have stumbled over a treasure trove of them.  They were . . . well . . . simply beautiful . . . as was the way they glided across the Windex-blue lined paper populating my denim-covered school binder...

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It's Time for a LegalTED When IBM Wants a Patent on No Patents

Posted on September 29, 2008
Why LegalTED?  Because we're using 18th Century dispute resolution technology to solve 21st Century conflicts.  Because we're all scratching our heads over items like the one below from SlashDot  -- IBM Wants a Patent on Finding Areas Lacking Patents posting them, and then going on with our business days as if there weren't anything we could do about it -- waiting for Congress, for instance, to solve a problem that rests in our own hands...

Blawg Review # 179 Secures Innovation Tomorrow Morning

Posted on September 28, 2008
Great way to start your IP week -- check out Blawg Review #179 at Securing Innovation tomorrow morning.  Preview here. Looking forward to it!

As Bratz/Mattel Mediator Speaks, Mike Young Wonders If It's Too Much

Posted on September 25, 2008
In Friday's Daily Journal, mediator and former U.S. ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper talks about his efforts to help the Bratz/Mattel parties settle their long-running patent infringement lawsuit.  Mediator Mike Young wonders about mediation confidentiality as both Prosper and counsel talk about the potential to settle the case and the way in which trial proceedings have impeded resolution...

Preparing for an IP Mediation: Flow Charts, Check Lists and Mind Maps

Posted on September 23, 2008
(mind map from Knowledge Aforethought) Check out the brilliant copyright flow charts and checklists which the The Corner of Lex and Biz has thoughtfully aggregated for the rest of us here. When I prepare for an IP mediation, I take the parties' briefs and make flow charts, mind maps and checklists from them...

Blawg Review # 178 Rocks the IP World from Down Under

Posted on September 22, 2008
Run, don't walk to what may well be the Best BlawgReview of the Year at Freedom to Differ with these tasty IP and technology morsels.  Law, blogs and technology At one of my favourite blawgs, The UTube Blog, Edward Lee blogged that NBC praises YouTube technology in keeping unauthorized Olympics videos off the Internet — is Viacom’s case against YouTube now toast? At PrawfsBlawg Marc Blitz pondered the privacy implications of a video game that you control with your mind...

Law in Motion: Legal Documentary Journalism at its Best

Posted on September 20, 2008
When I celebrate the fact that the means of production are now in the hands of the people, I'm not talking about the ten-fingers of your 13-year-old daughter (great as her uploaded videos of the family cat might be). If you're longing for quality documentary content on the internet, check out the KobreGuide, which has a LAW CHANNEL channel here...

California Supremes Open Door Closed by U.S. Supremes

Posted on September 04, 2008
by Jay McCauley Every time I ask attorneys to identify the single worst drawback of arbitration, their overwhelming answer is “no appeal."  With Arbitration comes the nightmare of losing for no good reason with no possible fix...

If You Can't Copy the Law, There's Something Really Wrong Here

Posted on September 03, 2008
From the No Comment Department: (h/t Slashdot) California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to share them. And that's not sitting right with Internet gadfly, and open-access hero, Carl Malamud. He has spent the last couple months scanning tens of thousands of pages containing city, county and state laws — think building codes, banking laws, etc...

California Supremes Open Door Closed by U.S. Supremes

Posted on September 02, 2008
by Jay McCauley Every time I ask attorneys to identify the single worst drawback of arbitration, their overwhelming answer is “no appeal."  With Arbitration comes the nightmare of losing for no good reason with no possible fix...

What to Do When the FBI Arrives at Your Door

Posted on August 29, 2008
In light of the FBI's arrest of local blogger and alleged illegal streamer of copyrighted Guns and Roses music, Kevin Cogill, I thought it would be useful to the blogging community to direct it to tips on dealing with the FBI below:   If an Agent Knocks:  Federal Investigators and Your Rights from the Center for Constitutional Rights...

FBI Plays Starring Role as IP Bully by Arresting Blogger

Posted on August 29, 2008
Blogger arrested, accused of posting 9 unreleased Guns N' Roses songs Those of you old enough to remember Woodstock in "real time" or to have attended yourself, you'll no doubt recall the magic moment when the concert producers decided to tear down the fences and make the concert free...

Patent Reform at the DNC and Dovetailing Differences to Settle Patent Infringement Litigation

Posted on August 28, 2008
Thanks, first, to Google Reader for offering me feeds to blogs it knows I'd like but don't have (like Peter Zura's 271 Patent Blog) and then making it easy for me to add them to my Reader, which I can now read on my iPhone thanks to Apple.  Really...

Los Angeles Judges and Attorneys!! Engage Local High School Students in Conversation about the Tensions Between Liberty and Security to Commemorate 9/11

Posted on August 26, 2008
Dialogues on Freedom - Volunteers needed!  Commenorate 9/11 by engaging high students in a discussion about the tensions between liberty and security in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center.  These kids -- 15 through 18 -- were 8 to 11 years old a the time of the attacks...

Linked In Answers to Question: Who Benefits from Inefficiencies of Patent Litigation?

Posted on August 24, 2008
I recently posed the following question to the IP ADR Blog's readers and to my LinkedIn network:   Which patent infringement litigation parties (if any) benefit from the inefficiencies in the process?  As usual, my LinkedIn Network delivers...

And You Thought You Were Engaged in Protracted Litigation

Posted on August 24, 2008
Lowering the Bar citing California Punitive Damages provides this comment in response to the return of Exxon to the Ninth Circuit after two decades of litigation. In this artist's conception, the last two human attorneys finally realize they are still on Earth, that the Exxon case has still not been fully resolved, and that they will have to ask for yet another continuance because they aren't dressed for court...

Malpractice Alert: Is it a Settlement Conference or a Mediation?

Posted on August 21, 2008
Here in California, there's no stronger rule of confidentiality than that applied to a mediation.  It cannot be impliedly waived (Simmons v. Ghaderi) like most privileges, including the near-sacred attorney-client privilege.  You cannot be estopped from relying upon it...

Blawg Review #173 at Chicago IP Litigation is Swimming

Posted on August 19, 2008
Another Monday, another collection of great law blog posts courtesy of the Blawg Review.  This week, Blawg Review # 173 has been put into the capable hands of  DLA Piper IP litigator David Donoghue over at the Chicago IP Litigation Blog...

Larry Lessig on Congressional Reform, Internet Policy and the Upcoming Election

Posted on August 19, 2008
This is a brief interview with Lawrence Lessig at this year's Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. Lessig answers questions about Change-Congress.org: an online, participatory tagging tool to encourage reform and transparency in the US Congress...

Cease and Desist at Pooh Corner

Posted on August 19, 2008
This lawsuit falls into the category of deterrence.  Because I live in a part of the world where "creatives" regularly refer to Disney as Maushwitz, I don't tend to think of it as the happiest place on earth.   The question here, however, is business strategy and tactics; public image vs...

Do Patent Infringement Litigants WANT an Inefficient Dispute Resolution Process?

Posted on August 18, 2008
Now that my step-son is no longer my legal assistant (sniff) but an IP litigator with one of the best IP firms in the country (Irell & Manella) he's a source!! Yesterday I asked him this question:  which patent infringement litigants benefit from the inefficiencies of the patent litigation process -- particularly those who are involved in protracted litigation like those lawsuits recently settled by Nokia and Qualcomm...

As We Were JUST saying . . . . last YEAR, Innovate, I mean ADVERTISE

Posted on August 16, 2008
I've lived long enough to remember the Empire of the American Car Industry, 25 cent a gallon gas and 35 cent packs of cigarettes (I should have quit when prices reached the half dollar mark). In the mid-80's Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam wrote a scorching indictment of the way the Detroit Auto Giants all but handed over the keys to their market dominance to the Japanese for whom the battle of Detroit and Toykyo looked more like taking candy from the hands of oblivious monster-car babies...

An Olympic Moment: Negotiating IP Licenses and Disputes with Chinese Nationals

Posted on August 15, 2008
Item:  China, one of the world's largest and most promising markets, has seen a 20 percent annual increase in patent application filings over the last fifteen years. Item:  In 2007, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China received 694,153 patent applications, an increase of 21...

Involved in Contentious IP Litigation? Check Out This Cluster #$%@#

Posted on August 14, 2008
Though the headline -- Cybersex Patent Case Leads to Bad Vibes Between Firm, Client -- may draw you in, it's the hyper-compounded conflicts of this litigation that will make your eyes roll.  You don't even need to understand who's who or what's what to get a good taste of the procedural nightmare playing out here:   Calling the heated struggle with Piccionelli a conflict of interest that threatened the firm's loyalty to Internet Services, Keker filed a motion to withdraw from the case, saying it could no longer represent Internet Services under State Bar Rule 3-700(b), which addresses mandatory withdrawal...

IP Litigator Rule-of-Law-Heroes from Perkins Coie

Posted on August 13, 2008
I try not to stray into political waters, but the rule of law is what we honor here even when we're trying to settle cases instead of trying them.  So we're directing you to a Seattle Times article -- Personal test of principles -- about Perkins Coie IP attorneys Joe McMillan's and Harry Schneider's representation of the first alleged terrorist tried by American authorities...

This is Where the Patent Litigation Ends: Cross-Licenses & Share Prices Up

Posted on August 13, 2008
So how about reverse engineering the litigation?  What steps were actually necessary to achieve the settlement?  Was it something more than just wearing one another out?  Were early summary judgment or adjudication motions needed before the situation could be clearly sized up?  Were the legal issues or the business issues more prominent?  Where were the carrots and where were the sticks?             This lawsuit was filed five years ago...

Settle Your IP Dispute in a Hot Tub

Posted on August 12, 2008
Get ready for a radical new idea.  One that: suggests the search for accuracy should trump a fully adversarial process; would wrest some control of the litigation and trial process from the hands of the attorneys; and into the care of the experts; and, just might focus IP litigants on the fact that they have a business problem burdened with justice issues rather than a legal problem that frustrates business operations...

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