EBC restrained from publishing its own injunction

Earlier we have reported about an injunction granted by the Lucknow District  against Westlaw India and Indlaw from infringing the copyrights of Eastern Book Company in their case reports "Supreme Court Cases". Report available here.

Now in an interesting move Legally India reports that the  Lucknow District court through another injunction restrained EBC from publicizing that they have been granted an injunction by the same court for alleged plagiarism.

Order: (translation available with Legally India). 

Just in Bollywood Style: Jodi Breakers

The iP aroUnd, from today has started a string of posts for movies' lovers- Just in Bollywood Style.

Just in Bollywood Style is the name given to posts that will reveal the Bollywood movies which are or were under scanner for being alleged as a direct-lift or facelift of some other original movie. 

The first post begins today with the movie Jodi Breakers. The movie was allegedly the copy of the year 2010 French film 'Heartbreakers'. 

According to the sources, the French producers have filed the case against five people - the producer, Prasar Visions Pvt Ltd, director Ashwini Chaudhary, the writer, the processing lab and Dariwala who claimed that the producers stole her idea. The first hearing took place on February 10 and today is the second hearing." 

The makers of Jodi Breakers had offered to let the Heartbreakers team read the entire script, provided they agree to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), which the Heartbreakers team declined to sign.

News Link

Mirror Worlds lost the patent infringement suit

It was again a victorious day for Apple Inc. (AAPL), when it won in an appeal against a verdict regarding the issue of U.S. patent-infringement of the invention by a professor of Yale University on how documents are displayed on a computer screen.

The question arose in the case was, whether Apple was responsible for infringement of patents owned by Mirror Worlds LLC. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington gave the verdict, upholding a lower-court decision that tossed the 2010 jury verdict.

The suit began in 2008, when Mirror Worlds, founded by Yale University computer-science Professor David Gelernter, sued Apple’s alleging that its Mac computers infringed its patents. Apple challenged the validity of the patents and argued against the infringement. The jury held Apple responsible for infringing three patents and awarded damages of $208.5 million for each, (a total of $625.5 million). In court papers, Apple argued that the amount was too high and that it was improper to add the damages.

Later the U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, overturned the October 2010 verdict, holding that Apple was not liable for infringement of the patent and that Mirror Worlds had failed to establish its case. The court also said the damage award was too high, while also upholding the validity of the three Mirror Worlds patents.

The trial looked into the Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in Apple’s Mac operating systems.

The case can be found by searching Mirror Worlds LLC v. Apple Inc., 11-1392, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington) and Mirror Worlds LLC v. Apple Inc., 08cv88, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Tyler). 

Source 

EBC granted injunction against Westlaw for infringing copyright

Thomson Reuters, the multinational information conglomerate based on New York along with its Indian operations- Westlaw India and Indlaw have been restrained by an ad interim injunction from infringing the Copyrights of EBC in their law report "Supreme Court Cases" known as SCC. 

EBC's right over head notes and editorial notes in SCC were earlier upheld by the Supreme Court in Eastern book company v D B Modak

In a lawsuit filed against Thomson Reuters / Westlaw India / Indlaw, the Lucknow District Court Judge, has passed an Interim Injunction on 22/8/2012 restraining the defendants, their assignee's, business franchises, licensees, distributors, agents etc from selling, distributing or otherwise make available to people either as CD- ROM's or through their website or any other means which would infringe the copyright of SCC during the pendency of the suit.

The learned judge after taking into account the affidavit filed by EBC and the contentions raised by them felt that there is a prima facie case as well as balance of convenience  in favour of the plaintiff  due to "exact tallying" of editorial notes by the defendants in their online journals 

14th September has been set out as the date for filing written statements and framing issues.

EBC v Thomson Reuters Order

Source

Trademark Infringement Suit over Kyuss Lives ! decided

In a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by former Kyuss guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Scott Reeder against their ex-bandmates, vocalist John Garcia and drummer Brant Bjork, involving the use of the latter pair's current incarnation, Kyuss Lives !, judge S. James Otero of the United States District Court Central District of California has given the verdict on 20^th of this month. According to the judgment, Kyuss Lives ! has been allowed to the Defendants to be used as a signature for live performances, but not for recordings.

"The court will issue a preliminary injunction prohibiting defendants from using the Kyuss mark in any capacity unless the word 'Lives' follows the word 'Kyuss' in equally-prominent lettering," says the verdict.

In his statement, Bjork previously claimed that Homme and Reeder had only trademarked the Kyuss name after Bjork had left the band in 1993, thus giving rise to issue as to whether the pair can be held liable for stealing the title.          

News Source

Apple vs. Samsung: Trial to be over soon.

The most popular and most complex patent lawsuit between two giants, is about to be over. Apple and Samsung both have finished presenting evidence in the patent infringement trial, involving the technology in each company’s smart-phones and tablet computers.

Both sides seem to be submitting closing arguments on 21^st August, before the jury in U.S. District Court in San Jose begins its deliberations the next day. On 17^th of this month, which was the last day of testimony, both sides presented rebuttal witnesses to reinforce their sides. 

News Source 

Apple v. Samsung: Early Days of iPhone in the Courtroom

In the famous multibillion-dollar patent showdown, Apple Inc, on Friday, deployed two of its executives as ammunition, including a software chief who assembled the design team for the original iPhone. 

In the court room, the Apple Software Chief Scott Forstall narrated the early days of iPhone development. According to the testimony the secret design work was codenamed as the “Purple Project”. He further added that he pinned a note on the door of the dorm, “Fight Club,” a reference to the movie’s screed to ensure what happened behind closed doors remained there.

The entire aim of the testimony was strengthening Apple’s legal argument and to prove that it was too much involved to develop products such as the iPhone and iPad, which have been “slavishly copied” by rival Samsung. Forstall further added that there was need of secrecy as Apple was making a new phone “out of whole cloth.”

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, used a video slide showing that Apple spent more than $1 billion on U.S. advertising on the iPhone and iPad between 2008 and 2011 and told the jury how Samsung’s copying has fostered consumer confusion and made it harder to market Apple products.

Facing the questions from the rival as to whether the iPhone 5, (set to be released in September), would have a different design than the iPhone 4S, Schiller declined to discuss the design, saying it was confidential.

The trial continued on Friday after the U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Apple’s bid to end the case immediately with a judgment in its favor.

Koh also condemned Samsung’s legal team for its “theatrics” and “sideshow,” but refused to stop the trial. The trial resumes Monday morning with the testimony of another Samsung executive and several Apple experts.

Source

Setback to Kodak

In a patent suit involving Kodak on one hand and Apple and RIM on the other,  Kodak has faced setback, when the patent controversy regarding digital image previews was decided against it. The patent described a system for previewing images on digital cameras and was considered as one of the most valuable one in Kodak's portfolio.

When it began?

It was in January 2010, when Kodak filed a suit and thereby made an attempt in obtaining licensing fees from RIM and Apple for using technology, which according to it was relating to the way digital images are previewed on a screen. According to Kodak, the same technology was patented by it. Kodak was seeking over $1 billion from Apple alone. 

Decision given. 

The International Trade Commission (ITC), in consensus with a judge’s ruling ruled that neither Apple nor RIM has violated Kodak’s patent for digital image preview inviting an injunction to prevent imports of defendants products to the market

Consequences ahead. 

This decision can be a grave setback to the Plaintiff as it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. It had the hope of selling its patents in order to revive the company. Now without the image previewing patents the value of its patent portfolio could fall significantly giving more trouble to already bankrupted company.

Source

Red bull Wins trademark battle

The energy drink company "Red bull" succeeded in its trademark infringement suit against Sun Mark Inc for  use of trademark  "Bullet" for their drinks and also for advertising slogan "No bull in this Can"

 The defendants, Sun mark and associated shipping sea Air & Land forwarding used the trademark "BULLET"for their energy drink. Red bull alleged that Sun mark's use has violated rights of Red bull in their mark "BULLIT" for energy drinks.

London High Court Judge, Mr Arnold siding with Red Bull's claim opined that Sunmark's use of "Bullet" is capable of creating a likelihood of confusion among the customers that it belong to Red bull. Further he added that use of  "no bull ...." slogan amounted to taking unfair advantage of repute of Red Bull.

But many including Sun mark's founder Dr Ranger finds Red Bull's acts as bully - boy tactics and unnecessary. Sun mark  now plans to prefer an appeal against this judgement and stated that Red bull's trademark bullit was registered in bad faith and the company had no plans to use it.

Source

Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Linkedin, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley & More in IP Conflict

In a patent trolling operation, Parallel Iron has sued a bunch of tech companies and banks because of the file systems they use.

The lawsuits were filed in April and those lawsuits were refiled in June. It also filed a bunch of new lawsuits, some of which were more specific about the file system. For example, in the Facebook and Amazon cases, the concerned file system is the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). In the Oracle suit, it's parallel Network File System (pNFS). Amongst all the defendants, EMC seems to be the only company who tried to first sue for declaratory judgment in a different venue. But still EMC has been dragged in the lawsuit with all the others in Delaware on the same day that EMC filed its own suit in Massachusetts. 

The facts of this suit suggest that the four inventors on these patents made some amazing breakthrough, and everyone else copied it: 

"In this technological age, we take for granted the ability to access tremendous amounts of data through our computers and the Internet, a process that seems effortless and unremarkable. But this apparent effortlessness is an illusion, made possible only by technological wizardry. The amount of information that is used by many companies has outstripped the storage capacity of individual memory devices. The information must be stored across hundreds or thousands of individual memory devices and machines. The ability to keep track of information as it is distributed across numerous devices and machines, while still allowing users to retrieve it seamlessly upon request, is a feat that was impossible until recently. It was made possible by the innovations of technological pioneers like Melvin James Bullen, Steven Louis Dodd, William Thomas Lynch, and David James Herbison.
Bullen, Dodd, Lynch and Herbison were, among others, members of a company dedicated to solving the difficult problems that limited the capacity of computer technology and the Internet, particularly problems concerning data storage. These engineers found innovative solutions for these problems and patented several technologies for data storage, including the ones at issue in this case. Many of the data-access feats we take for granted today are possible because of the data-storage inventions of Bullen, Dodd, Lynch and Herbison."

The patents in question are 7,197,662, 7,543,177 and 7,958,388, which are for "methods and systems for a storage system." The original filing dates for the patents in question come into picture around years 2002 and 2003. For Example, the year 2002 witnessed the original filing date of the 7,197,662 patent.