Four employees of the California biotech company Genentech have been charged in federal court with stealing medical formulas and other trade secrets for a rival Taiwanese firm. According to an indictment that was unsealed in San Francisco federal court, a senior scientist at Genentech and three co-workers stole trade secrets on behalf of JHL Biotech…
A Texas district court judge has tossed a $210 million lawsuit filed against Frontier Communications Corp. accusing the company of patent infringement. Frontier alleged that the company that filed the lawsuit, Blue Spike, was a “serial litigant” whose allegations amounted to little more than 140 pages of boilerplate accusations.
A Houston jury has sided with the popular Texas convenience store chain Buc-ee’s in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in federal court against a rival company. The lawsuit alleged that the cartoon alligator logo of a San Antonio and South Texas based convenience store chain called Choke Canyon was too similar to the famous Buc-ee’s…
Heygood, Orr & Pearson recently received notice of their success on appeal in their defense of a client in a theft of trade secrets case. The client is a company involved in the sale of investments known as life settlements.
Led Zeppelin’s recent legal victory in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed over the band’s song “Stairway to Heaven” may dampen the number of intellectual property lawsuits filed over pop songs, legal experts say. The number of copyright lawsuits filed over allegedly stolen pop songs had been growing steadily following a verdict in a case involving…
A Wisconsin medical software company has been awarded $940 million in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit filed against an India-based technology provider. The verdict in the lawsuit filed by Epic Systems against Tata Consultancies is one of the largest damage awards on record in a case involving commercial trade secrets.
In a landmark intellectual property ruling, jurors in Los Angeles recently ruled that musicians Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke violated the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got To Give It Up” when they co-wrote Thicke’s 2013 hit “Blurred Lines.” The jury awarded Gaye’s children more than $7.3 million in damages, stating that “Blurred Lines”…
The law firm of Heygood, Orr & Pearson was founded on the simple idea that companies and individuals should be accountable for their own actions. When they refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoing, we believe they should be made to do so in a court of law.
Chobani yogurt has mounted an advertising campaign based on the phrase “How Matters.” For example, the Chobani website notes, “HOW WE MAKE OUR PRODUCT MATTERS. A cup of yogurt won’t change the world, but how we make it might” and “How we do business matters to us, because we believe in doing business the right…
Founded in 1998, PODS delivers containers to homes and businesses to be filled and transported to storage centers. PODS is based in Clearwater, Florida. In 2012, PODS filed an intellectual property lawsuit against U-Haul International in federal court in Tampa alleging that U-Haul “improperly and unlawfully” used the PODS trademark on its website as a way…
Our patent laws reward inventors with a limited monopoly but require that such a monopoly be defined with clear boundaries. A patent application must describe the invention with a certain degree of “definiteness.”
In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Ginsburg, the Supreme Court has held that the equitable doctrine of laches cannot be invoked as a bar to a claim for damages brought within the three-year window established by Section 507(b) of the Copyright Act. Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc, No. 12–1315. (U.S. May 19, 2014). Justice Breyer…