- “Plaintiffs’ Attorneys to Get $800,000 in Preliminary Settlement, Class Members Receive Zero” [Calif. Civil Justice covering Bluetooth settlement in which Ted was objector; earlier here and here]
- “Lawyer Jailed for Contempt Is Freed After 14 Years” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- Money makes the signals go ’round: another probe of red-light cameras yields few surprises [Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bungalow, Bainbridge on Washington, D.C.]
- Previously little-known company surfaces in E.D. Tex. to claim Apple, many other companies violate its patent for touchpads [AppleInsider via @JohnLobert]
- Child endangerment saga of mom who left kids at Montana mall is now a national story [ABC News; earlier post with many comments; Free Range Kids and more]
- Meet Obama Administration “special adviser on ‘green’ jobs” Van Jones ["Dunphy", McCarthy at NRO "Corner"]
- Irrationality of furloughs at University of Wisconsin should provide yet another ground to question New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act [Coyote]
- Australia’s internet blacklist is so secret you can’t even find out what sites are on it [Popehat - language] Oz to block online video games unsuitable for those under 15 [BoingBoing]
Tagged as:
Apple,
Australia,
class action settlements,
contempt,
Eastern District of Texas,
online speech,
patent litigation,
red light cameras,
wage and hour suits
- At Reason “Hit and Run”, Damon Root deems a certain website “indispensable” [accolades file]
- Montgomery Blair Sibley, colorful lawyer for the “D.C. Madam” and a figure much covered on this site, has new book out [Doyle/McClatchy]
- Although Indian tribal litigators attacked it as “disparaging”, the Washington Redskins football team can keep its trademark, for now at least. “My ancestors were both Vikings and Cowboys. Do I have a course of action?” [Volokh comments]
- “Is Patent Infringement Litigation Up or Down?” [Frankel, The American Lawyer]
- Maryland high court dismisses autism-mercury lawsuit [Seidel, Krauss @ Point of Law]
- Chrysler dealers are lawyering up against the prospect of being cast off [WSJ Law Blog]
- “Should doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines be offered liability protection?” [KevinMD]
- Obama proposes $1.25 billion to settle black farmers’ long-running bias claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture [AP/Yahoo]
Tagged as:
accolades,
agriculture and farming,
autism,
auto dealership protection laws,
Chrysler,
Montgomery Blair Sibley,
patent litigation,
patent trolls,
vaccines
- Florida: “Law firm is found liable for injuries to client who fell off a chair” [WPBF via Bernabe]
- Monsanto, known for hardball litigation over its patented seeds, might regret taking on duPont [AmLaw Litigation Daily, earlier here and here]
- Kenyan man sues women’s rights activists for leading sex boycott that his wife joined [Daily Nation]
- Notice a “sign this EFCA petition” message in your Twitter stream, about the controversial card-check union bill? Better check out its bona fides [Point of Law]
- RIAA said it was going to stop filing new cases against music downloaders, but that might depend on what the definition of new cases is [Ars Technica, AmLaw Litigation Daily]
- EEOC guidance warns employers about violating ADA in trying to cope with H1N1 flu virus in workplace [Daniel Schwartz, Workplace Prof Blog; related, earlier]
- Cluelessness, more than censor’s urge, might explain that ghastly bill filed by Rep. Linda Sanchez to combat “cyberbullying” by throttling online speech [Jacob Sullum; earlier here, etc.]
- Buxom British gals claim victory after Marks & Spencer rescinds $3 surcharge on larger-size bras [AP/Idaho Statesman, The Sun via Amy Alkon]
Tagged as:
card check,
communicable disease,
patent litigation,
RIAA and file sharing,
Twitter,
United Kingdom
by SSFC on December 30, 2008
A Massachusetts company known as Worlds.com, which to my knowledge has never produced a product of the sort known as a “Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game,” nevertheless claims a patent in the concept. These games, the best known of which are probably World of Warcraft or Everquest, have been around for well over ten years, and are quite the moneymaking ventures for their producers.
Now Worlds.com is suing NCSoft, a Korean company that produces the games Lineage and City of Heroes, based on a patent filed in 1999 and issued in 2004 for a “system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space,” though some of the NCSoft games alleged to breach the patent were produced before Worlds.com even filed its application. As Words.com has never produced such a game, and appears to be little more than a vehicle for holding the patent, one expects that NCSoft will counterclaim seeking to invalidate the patent. Nevertheless, Worlds.com announces that it would “welcome licensing inquiries from the on-line game industry,” meaning Sony and Blizzard, to allow those companies to continue making money from their own games.
The best story I could find on this came from The Register, which has the application and notes that the patent is an “extremely broad” one which could reach beyond games. Other informative coverage can be found at gaming sites, including Broken Toys, Kotaku, and Virtual World News.
Tagged as:
patent litigation,
patent trolls,
videogames
A trend? Following up on yesterday’s post about the camera and Medtronic cases: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday upheld an attorney fee award of nearly $17 million because of baseless filings and bad faith patent litigation by two drug companies. A district court awarded the fees to Takeda Chemical Industries, which had sued two generic drug companies — Mylan Laboratories and Alphapharm Pty. Ltd. — for patent infringement. …The district court agreed with Takeda that both companies lacked a good faith basis for their certification filings and had engaged in litigation misconduct.” (Marcia Coyle, “Panel Upholds $17M Attorney Fee Award, Cites Bad-Faith Patent Litigation by Drug Companies”, National Law Journal, Dec. 9).
Tagged as:
patent litigation,
sanctions
“Frequent patent defendants say they’re hit by frivolous lawsuits all the time. But it’s very rare for a judge to find a patent lawsuit to be frivolous enough to grant sanctions and attorney’s fees.” Last week, however, a judge in Peoria issued Rule 11 sanctions against a company called Triune Star which held a patent on a certain type of GPS-using camera. The patent examiner had taken care to limit the patent to infrared cameras to overcome an obviousness objection, but the plaintiff’s lawyers — Keith Rockey and Kathleen Lyons of Chicago-based Rockey, Depke & Lyons — then proceeded to sue three big companies that had sold conventional cameras. A judge awarded the defendants reasonable costs and attorney’s fees, something defense lawyer Brian Rupp says has happened only a few times in the last decade. (Joe Mullin, Prior Art, Dec. 4 via TechDirt; Techdirt, Feb. 26 (Medtronic)).
Tagged as:
patent litigation,
sanctions
It’s not often that patent litigation furnishes the subject of a new Hollywood film; inventor-side attorneys must be hoping the David-and-Goliath theme of the Universal Pictures release Flash of Genius redounds to their benefit. (Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily, Oct. 3). The original New Yorker article on which the film is based is by no means devoid of balance, and includes a discussion of the late Jerome Lemelson, a longtime Overlawyered favorite (John Seabrook, The New Yorker, Jan. 11, 1993). Unrelatedly, a patent attorney turns up as the lead character of a fiction thriller in Paul Goldstein’s “A Patent Lie” (Stephen Albainy-Jenei, Patent Baristas, Sept. 29).
Tagged as:
autos,
Jerome Lemelson,
movies film and videos,
patent litigation
“McDermott, Will & Emery and client Medtronic Inc. must pay $4.3 million in attorney fees as punishment for alleged ‘abuse of advocacy’ in a patent case, a Colorado federal judge ordered Tuesday.” As we noted in our coverage back in February, the judge found at that time that the McDermott lawyers “artfully avoided the limitations of the patent claims and created an illusion of infringement. They did so with full awareness that their case was without merit.” (Zusha Elinson, The Recorder, Oct. 2; WSJ law blog, Oct. 2).
Tagged as:
patent litigation,
sanctions
More things it would be better to avoid doing if you’re a lawyer:
- Claim to be assetless and thus unable to make restitution for the largest theft of state money in Massachusetts history even though you live in a $1.5 million Florida house with a $70K BMW and other goodies [Boston Herald, Globe, disbarred attorney Richard Arrighi]
- Botch appeals and then refrain from telling clients their cases have been lost [Clifford Van Syoc, reprimanded by New Jersey high court; NJLJ; seven years ago]
- Attempt to deduct “more than $300,000 in prostitutes, p0rn, sex toys and erotic massages” on your income tax returns, even if you are “thought of as a good tax lawyer” [NY Post] Nor ought you to accept nude dances from a client as partial payment for legal fees [Chicago Tribune; for an unrelated tale of a purportedly consensual lap dance given by secretary to partner, see NYLJ back in April]
- Introduce a patent application purportedly signed in part by someone who in fact had been dead for a year or two [Law.com/The Recorder, Chicago's Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro, of blog-stalking fame, client's patent declared unenforceable] Or pursue a patent-infringement case based on what a federal judge later ruled to be a “tissue of lies” [NYLJ; New York law firm Abelman, Frayne & Schwab and lawyer David Jaroslawicz, ordered to pay opponents' legal fees; earlier mentions of Jaroslawicz at this site here, here, here, and here]
- Demand ransom for a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting [biggest U.K. art theft ever, all defendants have pleaded not guilty, LegalWeek via ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
don't,
Massachusetts,
New Jersey,
patent litigation,
patent quality,
Patent Troll Tracker,
strippers and exotic dancers,
taxes
- Business groups have signed off on dreadful ADA Restoration Act aimed at expanding disabled-rights lawsuits, reversing high court decisions that had moderated the law [WSJ; more here and here]
- U.K. man to win damages from rail firms on claim that trauma of Paddington crash turned him into deranged killer [Times Online]
- Patent cases taken on contingency lead to gigantic paydays for D.C.’s Dickstein Shapiro and Wiley Rein [Kim Eisler, Washingtonian; related last year at Eric Goldman's]
- Fort Lauderdale injury lawyer disbarred after stealing $300K in client funds; per an ABA state-by-state listing, Florida has not enacted payee notification to help prevent/detect such goings-on [Sun-Sentinel; more]
- I’ll pay top dollar for that spot under the bridge: tech firms hope to outbid patent trolls for marginal inventor rights [ABA Journal]
- Enviro-sympathetic analysis of Navy sonar case [Jamison Colburn, Dorf on Law, first and second posts via Adler @ Volokh]
- Obama proposal for youth national service “voluntary”? Well, schools will lose funds if they fail to meet goals [Goldberg, LAT; bad link fixed now]
- Not-so-independent sector: under pressure from Sacramento legislators (Feb. 6, PoL May 30), California foundations pledge to redirect millions toward minority causes [CRC]
- James Lileks on lawyer-friendly Microsoft Minnesota settlement [four years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Barack Obama,
California,
contingent fee,
disabled rights,
Florida,
Navy sonar,
patent litigation,
patent trolls,
payee notification,
railroads,
schools,
third party liability for crime,
United Kingdom
- Florida trial lawyers have funneled millions to Gov. Charlie Crist and GOP state legislators; now guess why Orlando isn’t going to get commuter rail [Bousquet/St. Petersburg Times; Sentinel]
- What his ex-law firm told the world was “extremely inappropriate personal conduct” was in reality no more than a “brief, consensual kiss” with co-worker, charges attorney in $90 million defamation suit; Kasowitz Benson says it was following zero tolerance policy [American Lawyer]
- SCOTUS, 9-0, Thomas writing, narrows scope for money-laundering charges over hiding unexplained cash — but will that curb forfeiture abuse? [Grits for Breakfast, Greenfield]
- After West Virginia high court refuses to review $405 million royalty dispute jury verdict against Chesapeake Energy and another defendant, company scraps plans to build $30 million headquarters in the state [PoL]
- Even after discounting anti-corporate rhetoric, there does seem to be a story here about aggressive seed patent litigation tactics used by agri-giant Monsanto, a firm known to our readers [Barlett & Steele, Vanity Fair; earlier]
- Medical liability consequences of much-promoted concept of hospital “never events” [Buckeye Surgeon]
- Cellphone rage update: Judge Robert Restaino ousted for jailing 46 people after one of the annoying devices rang out in his Niagara Falls, N.Y. courtroom [Buffalo News, earlier]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
bedsores,
Florida,
forfeiture,
never events,
patent litigation,
railroads,
West Virginia,
zero tolerance
The patenting of software, in contrast to the patenting of chemical and pharmaceutical compounds, generates relatively high litigation costs and low benefits (Pete Warden, Jun. 3, via our comments section; Tim Lee, guesting at Megan McArdle’s, has a three-part review of “an important new book by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer” on the subject (first, second, third)).
Tagged as:
patent litigation
Highly placed attorney with intellectual-property specialists Fish & Richardson accumulates his own portfolio of patents, quits the firm, begins suing Fish & Richardson clients, things get messy fast (Patent Troll Tracker, Oct. 21). Patent Troll Tracker (h/t Ambrogi) looks likely to become part of our regular blog rounds.
Tagged as:
patent litigation,
patent trolls,
technology
- She wore a wire: defense attorney says administrative assistant to one of the three lawyers in Kentucky fen-phen scandal worked as FBI mole, circumventing attorney-client privilege [AP, Courier-Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader, ABA Journal]
- Suing a lawyer because his deposition questions inflicted emotional distress? No way we’re going to open those floodgates, says court [NJLJ]
- Counsel Financial Services LLC, which stakes injury lawyers pending their paydays, says it’s “the largest provider of attorney loans in the United States and the only Law Firm Financing company endorsed by the AAJ (formerly ATLA)”; its friendly public face is a retired N.Y. judge while its founder is attorney Joseph DiNardo, suspended from practice in 2000 “after pleading guilty to filing a false federal tax return” and whose own lend-to-litigants operation, Plaintiff Support Services, shares an office suite with Counsel [Buffalo News] The firm’s current listing of executives includes no mention of DiNardo, though a Jul. 19 GoogleCached version has him listed as President;
- Patent litigation over cardiac stents criticized as “a horrendous waste of money” [N.Y. Times]
- More on the “pro bono road to riches”, this time from a California tenant case [Greg May, Cal Blog of Appeal]
- Not a new problem, but still one worth worrying about: what lawyers can do with charitable trusts when no one’s looking over their shoulder [N.Y. Times via ABA Journal]
- Has it suddenly turned legal to stage massive disruptions of rush-hour traffic, or are serial-lawbreaking cyclists “Critical Mass” just considered above the law? [Kersten @ Star-Tribune]
- “Look whose head is on a plate now”: no tears shed for fallen Lerach by attorney who fought him in the celebrated Fischel case [ChicTrib, San Diego U-T]
- “Jena Six” mythos obscures graver injustice to black defendants, namely criminal system’s imposition of long sentences for nonviolent offenses [Stuart Taylor, Jr. @ National Journal -- will rotate off site]
- Economist David Henderson on restaurant smoking bans [Econ Journal Watch, PDF, via Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Technical note: we learned from reader Christian Southwick that our roundups were displaying poorly on Internet Explorer (Ted and I use other browsers) and we found a way to fix. So, IE users, please drop us a line when you encounter problems — we may not hear about them otherwise.
Tagged as:
AAJ,
Bill Lerach,
Buffalo,
charitable trusts,
Daniel Fischel,
emotional distress,
fen-phen,
Kentucky,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
patent litigation,
pro bono,
restaurants,
roundups,
San Diego,
smoking bans
