A verdict from a federal jury that found networking equipment corporation Cisco Systems, Inc. fraudulently obtained technology developed by patent licenser XpertUniverse Inc.’s and violated two of the New York-based company’s patents. The jury ordered Cisco to pay $70 million in civil fraud damages and an additional $34,000 in damages for the patent infringement claims.
This video from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) discusses the major change to US patent law that took effect this month. On March 16, the USPTO switched from the “first-to-invent” system that has been used for decades to evaluate patent applications to a “first-to-file” system. The Wall Street Journal reported that the USPTO received
rs for stealing trade secrets. In its complaint, Express Scripts alleges that former Ernst & Young partner Donald Gravlin “had been sneaking into Express Scripts’ headquarters and stealing confidential and proprietary information belonging to Express Scripts and Medco over the course of several months, with assistance from other E&Y partners and employees.” The complaint alleges Galvin
An October 2012 video from the LexBlog Network talks about the risk that social game company Zynga took when it sued a former employee for allegedly taking confidential information to a competitor. This came only a few months after Zynga was defending itself from allegations of trade secrets theft. In business litigation, it is important for lawyers
A video was released recently that serves as a beginner’s guide to Zynga’s CityVille 2. The game is one of three titles launched last quarter that the San Francisco-based social game developer will be shutting down, according to GamePolitics.com. The decision came after Zynga reported a loss of $448 million for the quarter and a net
A recent survey found that that a common culprit of intellectual property or trade secret theft may be an individual that a company knows quite well: one of its own former employees. The Mountain View, California-based global security software company Symantec said in a recent press release that half of its employees who left their jobs in
In an April 2011 Associated Press video, University of Southern California intellectual property law expert Jack Lerner summarizes some of the issues in a long-running dispute between rival toy makers Mattel, Inc. and MGA Entertainment, Inc. over the billion-dollar Bratz doll line. Mattel first filed a lawsuit in 2004, alleging that the designer of the toys, Carter
Professional wrestler Ric Flair returned to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) during the December 2012 event. However, several months before that show, rival promoter Total Nonstop Action (TNA) filed a lawsuit against WWE after Flair reportedly backed out of his TNA contract in order to return to the competitor. The other defendant named in the
Back in November, we wrote about a federal judge ordering Canadian video game developer Silcon Knights to recall and destroy all unsold copies of Too Human. This was the result of a nasty court battle beginning in 2007, and the judge also ordered all other games containing North Carolina-based Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 game engine be recalled
The technology news and information website Ars Technica reported that Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) filed a lawsuit against four former employees it alleges “collectively downloaded over 100,000 files onto external hard drives in the six months before leaving” to join competing graphics chip maker Nvidia. The company also alleges that the
