It’s with mixed emotions that we wish Matthew Massari farewell.  Matt is joining our client Nike’s legal department in Portland, Oregon.    A recent story by Bob Shallit tells the story well.

Sacramento attorney Matt Massari has just nabbed his "dream job" – with Nike Inc. in Beaverton, Ore. A former football All-American at UC Davis, Massari went to the University of Oregon for law school and did an internship there with Nike. The company’s campus was "magical," he says. The focus on sports is right up his alley.

He continued doing some outside legal work for Nike in associate stints at Downey Brand and Weintraub Genshlea Chediak Tobin & Tobin. Recently he got a call from Nike, asking him to join the company’s two-dozen-member in-house legal team.

Massari is getting good wishes from Scott Hervey, the Weintraub attorney who supervised him here. But Hervey jokes that he’s a little tired of having top talent lured away. Another associate ended up with a studio job with Paramount.  "If you want a real cool in-house job with a great company," Hervey says ruefully, "come work for me."

By Audrey A. Millemann

A patent may be infringed directly or indirectly. Direct infringement exists when the alleged infringer makes, uses, sells, offers to sell, or imports a patented product or performs a patented method. 35 U.S.C. § 271(a). Indirect infringement exists when the alleged infringer causes another to directly infringe a patent. 35 U.S.C. §271(b) and (c). 

There are two types of indirect infringement: inducing infringement and contributory infringement. Inducing infringement is essentially aiding and abetting another to infringe a patent. Section 271(b). Contributory infringement exists when the alleged infringer sells a component of a patented invention knowing that the component is especially made for use in an infringing product and not a staple article of commerce having substantial noninfringing uses. Section 271(c). 

Continue Reading Supreme Court Adopts Willful Blindness Standard for Inducing Patent Infringement

By Scott Hervey

A California statute signed into law in 2005 by Governor Schwarzenegger was struck down by the United States Supreme Court on June 27 for running afoul of the First Amendment. The law prohibited the sale or rental of “violent video games” to minors; violations were punishable by a civil fine of up to $1,000.   The statute defined a “violent video game” as games in “which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted” in a manner that a “reasonable person, considering the game a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors,” that is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors,” and that “causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.” The Supreme Court found the statute to be overreaching and invalid.

Continue Reading The Supreme Court Shoots Down California’s Violent Video Game Statute

by Nathan Geronimo

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit addressed the standard for evaluating a claim for trademark dilution under the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 (“TDRA”), 15 U.S.C. §1125(c). The TDRA is meant to protect a property right in a trademark. Dilution prevents the use of a famous mark by others in any manner that lessens the uniqueness of the mark. Under the TDRA’s predecessor, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (“FTDA”) and cases under the FTDA, to pursue a claim for trademark dilution, the offending junior mark had to be “identical or nearly identical” to the mark it was diluting. The new standard represents a more holistic approach, applying factors that focus on, among other things, the degree of similarity between the two marks.

Continue Reading Levi’s Legal Department: The Ultimate Pocket Protectors

By Dale Campbell

The Ninth Circuit has attempted to end the disputes arising from the creation of Facebook. As dramatized in the Hollywood blockbuster, The Social Network, the Winklevoss twins and other Harvard graduates claimed that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them. The Winklevosses claimed they conceived and created the idea for a social network, then known as Harvard Connection and later as ConnectU, and hired Zuckerberg to complete the programming.

The Winklevosses claimed that Zuckerberg was involved in all aspects of the website development and business planning for Harvard Connection and acted as a member of the Harvard Connection development team. Zuckerberg was allegedly entrusted with the basic idea for the project and enterprise, including database and website design. Moreover, the Winkelvosses alleged that Zuckerberg was provided information regarding the website’s business model, functionality, concepts, and information to be collected from users. The Winklevosses alleged that Zuckerberg utilized all of this information in creating Facebook and failed to advise the Winklevosses that he had stopped working on the Harvard Connection code but, instead, was developing a competing website. The complaint alleged a variety of business torts including copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, breach of fiduciary duty, and interference with prospective economic advantage. 

Continue Reading At Some Point, Litigation Must Come To an End