by Scott Hervey

A ruling earlier this month by the Ninth Circuit provided three guidelines all marketing experts and their counsel should take note of.   These guidelines address the extent to which the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) (and most likely other Federal regulations on telemarketing) impacts texting as part of a marketing campaign. 

In the case at issue, Simon & Schuster hired a third party to manage the promotional campaign for a new Stephen King book, including securing a list of 100,000 cell phone numbers from the licensing agent for Nextones. Nextones offers consumers free cell phone ring tones in exchange for the consumer providing various information, including a cell phone number, and agreeing to receive promotions from Nextone, its “affiliates and brands.”

Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Ruling on Texting Provides Guidelines For The Marketing Industry

by James Kachmar

On June 15, 2009, the Court of Appeal for the Second District issued its ruling in FLIR Systems, Inc. v. Parrish and affirmed an award of attorneys fees and costs in the amount of $1.6 million to a defendant in a trade secrets misappropriation case. The FLIR Systems ruling demonstrates that a trial court has wide discretion to award sanctions against a plaintiff who brings a trade secrets misappropriation claim in bad faith.

Plaintiffs manufactured and sold microbolometers, which is a device used in connection with infrared cameras, night vision and thermal imaging. The defendants were former employees of plaintiffs and at least one defendant was responsible for creating a significant portion of plaintiff’s technology.

Continue Reading Bad Faith Trade Secret Claims and Attorney Fee Awards

by Jeff Pietsch

In April 2009, the Fourth Circuit upheld a summary judgment granted in favor of an online technology system designed to prevent plagiarism in a copyright infringement action. (A.V. v. iParadigms, L.L.C., (4th Cir. Apr. 16, 2009)). The plaintiffs, four high school students who were required to use the system by their schools, sued iParadigms’ for using their written works through the company’s “Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service.” The plaintiffs argued that Turnitin’s archiving of the students’ works in its system constituted a violation of their copyrights under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq. The court, however, disagreed with this assessment and ruled that the archiving of students’ works falls under the fair use doctrine, which allows the use of copyrighted works for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

 

Continue Reading Does an Anti-Plagiarism Service Violate Students’ Copyrights?

By W. Scott Cameron

The Internet is a seemingly endless and ever-expanding collection of information. You can find almost anything on the Internet if you look for it, and look in the right place. To find it, however, you often need the “domain name,” or address, of the web site that has the information you want. Every web page has its own unique domain name, and only one company can maintain the database that keeps track of all the domain names on the Internet. That company, currently VeriSign, Inc., essentially controls the Internet. The way VeriSign got that control, and the way it keeps it, led the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. (“CFIT”), to file an antitrust lawsuit, CFIT v. VeriSign, Inc. The Ninth Circuit ruled this week that CFIT can go forward with its suit, reversing the district court which had dismissed the suit three times. This begs the question: Will the Ninth Circuit bring down the Internet?

 

Continue Reading Will An Antitrust Lawsuit Bring Down The Internet? CFIT v. VeriSign, Inc.

By Audrey A. Millemann

A recent decision from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has interpreted provisions in patent litigation settlement agreements that grant a covenant not to sue. The case is TransCore, LP v. Electronic Transaction Consultants Corp., 2009 WL 929033 (Fed. Cir. 2009). 

 

In TransCore, the plaintiff,TransCore, LP, owned several patents covering automated toll collection systems. TransCore sued Mark IV Industries, a competitor, in 2000, for infringement of the patents. The parties settled the case. In the settlement, Mark IV paid TransCore $4.5 million and TransCore released all existing claims against Mark IV and agreed to an unconditional covenant not to sue for future infringement of the patents.

 

Continue Reading TransCore Case Changes Patent Licensing and Patent Settlements