California Intellectual Property Blog

California – CAO Group Inc., a company headquartered near Salt Lake City, Utah founded by Dr. Densen Cao, PhD was sued last week by Procter & Gamble Co., the well-known Ohio-based consumer goods conglomerate. Apart from dental products, CAO Group develops and manufactures a variety of different products like forensic lighting, diode lasers used in veterinary medicine, and billboard lighting.

P&G has taken issue with CAO Group’s dental products, accusing the company of infringing on its patented system of teeth whitening strips. The technology P&G hopes to protect is covered in 3 patents perta Read the rest

San Diego – Nintendo Co. Ltd. recently won a patent case against Motiva LLC when a panel of three judges rendered the decision that Nintendo’s Wii does not infringe on Motiva’s patents.  A Federal Circuit Court also rejected Motiva’s accusations that Nintendo had violated Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a trade remedy enacted to prohibit unfair methods of competition and wrongdoing in the importation of products into the United States.
The two patents at issue were No. 7,292,151 and No. 7,492,268, both entitled “Human movement measurement system”.  The patents center around “testing and training a Read the rest

Orange County – Last Wednesday a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld an earlier decision by the Court of Federal Claims, holding that the United States Postal Service and IBM did not infringe a shipping patent held by Uship Intellectual Properties LLC.

In the earlier case, Uship complained that the U.S. Postal Service infringed its U.S. Patent Number 5,831,220 for an “Automated package shipping machine.”  The ‘220 patent covers a system by which all of the shipping steps, from calculating postage to printing a label and accepting Read the rest

Los Angeles – Once again, Apple Inc. is the target a patent infringement lawsuit concerning its FaceTime app.  The Plaintiff is National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City, Taiwan.  The claim is based on U.S. Patent No. 7,561,078, issued in 2009, which relates to a system “for compressing a video data set” that provides a “coding strategy with parameter searching” which optimizes performance.  National Cheng Kung University believes that FaceTime, among other similar applications, is an infringement.

Apple’s  FaceTime is a downloadable software application for iOS devices such as iPhones, iPads and Macs whic Read the rest

California – An inventor by the name of John D’Agostino filed a complaint in a Delaware U.S. District Court accusing MasterCard, Inc. of infringing on his patent for a “System and method for performing secure credit card transactions”.

D’Agostino’s patents, No. 7,840,486 issued in 2010 and No. 8,036,988 issued in 2011, involve a payment method whereby a third party has “custodial control” of the consumer’s information to secure purchases made online or by other means in order to avoid having to provide the actual credit card number.

San Diego – Last week Ericsson Inc. added eight additional patents to its patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.   The original complaint, filed last November in a Texas U.S. District Court, was spawned by Samsung’s refusal to renew a license it had to 12 Ericsson patents covering various telecommunications devices and related multimedia equipment.

Samsung responded to the claims with a counterclaim alleging that Ericsson infringed on Samsung technology covered in 12 other patents.

Ericsson’s has denied Samsung’s a Read the rest

Orange County – A Federal Court of Appeals Judge upheld the decision made by a Florida District Court by holding that Aspex Eyewear Inc. is precluded from making a nearly identical patent infringement claim that it made in a previously failed patent infringement case against a different company.

In 2002, Aspex sued Altair Eyewear Inc., distributor of Tommy Bahama Sunglasses, believing Altair had been marketing and selling an infringing magnetic clip-on sunglass product.  The case concluded in 2007 when New York District Read the rest

Los Angeles – U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte recently ruled that Avocet Sports Technology Inc. waited an unreasonable amount of time, 6 years, to initiate a patent infringement case against Polar Electro, Inc.  Thus, she dismissed the case due to the doctrine of laches.

Avocet Sports Technology Inc., a Palo Alto, California company, tried to convince the Judge that the 6-year delay was due to a lack of funds needed to pursue litigation, but the Judge dismissed the excuse as having “no authority” to uphold it.  She further stated that Avocet’s claim of lack o Read the rest

California – Both CBS Corp. and NBC Universal Media LLC were sued in separate Texas federal court actions by Personal Audio LLC, a Beaumont, Texas company who claims to be “pioneers in playlists and podcasting.” The lawsuits stem from claims by Personal Audio that CBS and NBS are infringing on one of its five patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,112,504 B2. The patent at issue covers transmission of audio programming through the internet.

Personal Audio feels that the audio versions of television shows podcast by CBS and NBC infringe its patent. Specifically, Personal Audio is alleging that the CBS podcasts for news programming Read the rest

San Diego – On Monday U.S. District Judge Gary Allen Feess announced a stay in a patent infringement lawsuit against Southwest Airlines Co. until the USPTO finalizes its re-examination of the patents cited in the Complaint.  Feess ruled that it doesn’t make sense to continue the case until the patent re-examination is complete.

Advanced Media Networks LLC originally filed the lawsuit against Southwest Airlines in California federal court last December.  The lawsuit concerns Southwest’s in-flight Internet service provider, Row 44 Inc. which is also named in the lawsuit.

Advanced Medi Read the rest