Backed by big-firm lawyers, a non-producing company that claimed its patents underlay the online shopping cart sued dozens of retailers and extracted tens of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts in the Eastern District of Texas and elsewhere — until an appellate ruling declared its patents invalid. Despite its absence of products, the company’s website offered “tech support.” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
Posts Tagged ‘Eastern District of Texas’
Intellectual property law roundup
- Deborah Gerhardt on the ruling in favor of an artist who paints Crimson Tide sports highlights without University of Alabama say-so [Deborah Gerhardt/Eric Goldman, earlier here, etc.]
- Posner throws out Apple/Motorola case [Tabarrok, more]
- Joinder of defendants allegedly violating same patent: “D.C. Court Ruling Makes Life Tougher For Patent Trolls” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- “Google, AOL Face Patent Suit Over ‘Snippet’ Search Results, Ads” [Justia]
- “Absurd patent of the day, Apple re: wedge-shaped computers” [Tabarrok]
- “Defensive Patent License: judo for patent-trolls” [Doctorow/BB]
- Why are copyright terms so long? One theory [Julian Sanchez]
September 16 roundup
- House Judiciary holds hearing on asbestos-claim fraud and abuse, with Prof. Brickman headlining [Main Justice, Legal NewsLine, WSJ law blog, PoL, Brickman testimony]
- Endangered species habitat in Nevada: “Elko County wants end to 15-year-old trout case” [AP]
- “Why is the Eastern District of Texas home to so many patent trolls?” [Ted Frank/PoL, more] Tech giants say multi-defendant patent suits place them at disadvantage [WSJ Law Blog] Plus: “Patent company has big case, no office” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
- Lawsuit settlement and the lizard brain [Popehat]
- “U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Looks Into Eminent Domain Abuses” [Kanner, Somin] U.K.: “Squatters could be good for us all, says judge in empty homes ruling” [Telegraph]
- Madison mob silences Roger Clegg at news conference where he releases new study of UW race bias [ABA Journal, Althouse]
- Life in Australia: “Another motorized-beer-cooler DUI” [Lowering the Bar]
East Texas patent venue
The Federal Circuit appears to be cracking down on a notorious symbol of forum-shopping, according to Richard Samp at Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse.
Eastern District of Texas
Explaining the role of the nation’s most famous venue for patent litigation [Brad Feld, Tech Review]
October 12 roundup
- Speech-curbing proposals continue to get polite academic reception: NYU’s Jeremy Waldron, big advocate of laws to curb “hate speech”, delivered Holmes Lectures at Harvard this past week [HLS, schedule]
- Lawsuit over collectible baseball hit into stands by Phillies’ Ryan Howard, his 200th career homer [Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg; NJLRA]
- Orchid-importer prosecution a poster case for the evils of overcriminalization? Maybe not [Ken at Popehat]
- Texas State Fair and city of Dallas don’t have to allow evangelist to distribute religious tracts inside the fair, judge rules after three years [Dallas Observer blog]
- Drug maker: FDA’s curbs on truthful promotion of off-label uses impair our First Amendment speech rights [Beck and Herrmann and more, Point of Law and more]
- Did plaintiff Eolas Technologies go to unusual lengths to ensure Eastern District of Texas venue for its patent litigation? [Joe Mullin, IP Law and Business via Alison Frankel, AmLaw]
- Update: “Lesbian Denied Infertility Treatment Settles Lawsuit” [San Diego 6, earlier]
- Even in the Ninth Circuit, “psychological injury resulting from a legitimate personnel action” is not compensable [Volokh]
Troll Tracker blog suit settles
As the East Texas jury was set to begin deliberations. Per Joe Mullin’s must-read coverage at IP Law and Business, Rick Frenkel’s lawyer-critical blog is now entirely closed down even to private readers except as an archive for the use of lawyers in the related litigation. More: Mullin, Sept. 18 (Frenkel “wouldn’t have the financial resources to defend himself” had his employer Cisco not covered his legal costs), Sept. 21 (“You don’t wrestle with a snake, you cut its head off,” said plaintiff T. John (“Johnny”) Ward, Jr. “We shut the blog down, is what we did.”)
“Patent reformer becomes troll, sues defunct OSS company”
And did a small defendant wind up being added to the list of those sued in an intellectual-property suit just in order to secure venue in the plaintiff-beloved Eastern District of Texas? [Ars Technica]
“Texas Judge Bans Microsoft From Selling Word in the U.S.”
The Eastern District of Texas strikes again. [DailyTech, Concurring Opinions, Legal BlogWatch, WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
July 21 roundup
- “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]