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14th November, 2009 CCTV.com wins infringement lawsuit The official website of China Central Television, CCTV.com has won a lawsuit against the website of Shijilong Information Network Co Ltd. which had telecast an Olympic torch relay program on Mount Qomolanma without its permission. CCTV is the official broadcaster of the Beijing Games and its related torch relay in China and they have the approval from the International Olympic Committee for the telecast. CCTV.com has also obtained the official Internet broadcasting rights, including audio and video content of 3,800 hours of Olympic events. CCTV.com had demanded a public apology and 4.1 million yuan as compensation from Shijilong Information Network Co Ltd., claiming that online broadcasting rights of CCTV programs belonged to CCTV.com, and that any use of the contents without permission was a copyright infringement. The Intermediate People's Court of Guangzhou ruled the lawsuit in favor of CCTV.com and ordered 300,000 yuan to be paid by Shijilong as compensation.
No Trademark for Mattress.com A bedding retailer with the name 1800Mattress.com intented to trademark the term Mattress.com, but a federal appeals court in the U.S has rejected it. The U.S. Court stated that the term was too common to be trademarked. The appellate court also particularly approved that the public would generally believe that Mattress.com signifies any online mattress seller, as opposed to 1800Mattress.com. The bedding company's claim to trademark the term as some websites were using Mattress.com in their domain names and not selling them online was also rejected by the court. The appellate court had recently ruled that Hotels.com was also too generic to be trademarked, in a related case.
NY-NY in a trademark infringement dispute New York-New York (NY-NY) hotel-casino in Las Vegas has sued Ronnie Katzin, a California man claiming his involvement in infringing the casino's trademarks. A suit alleging "cyber squatting" was filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas against, Katzin and his web site. The NY-NY hotel-casino claims that Katzin's web site used the phrase "New York New York," infringing the Las Vegas hotel-casino's trademarks with the same name. The web site also featured an image of the NY-NY Las Vegas property, but a disclaimer mentioning no affiliation with the Las Vegas property was not placed. The lawsuit alleges that Ronnie Katzin had intented to profit from “New York-New York” marks.
Accenture and Guidewire battle over patent Accenture, a technology outsourcing and consulting firm has filed a complaint in federal district court in Wilmington, Delaware, against Guidewire Software Inc., which has been labeled one of the Silicon Valley Six, an elite group of private technology companies. Accenture alleges that Guidewire Insurance Suite and Guidewire ClaimCenter, "have no substantial non-infringing use" and has appealed to the court to stop Guidewire Software Inc. from selling its insurance software in the United States, which Accenture claims infringes its patent. It has made a demand for its damages also. The patent in question is the Accenture Claims Component Solution technology patent which was granted by the USPTO. Accenture had earlier filed a complaint against Guidewire for misappropriating trade secrets in 2007. Guidewire countersued and in 2008 a judge had dismissed both the suits.
Intel and AMD settle The ongoing battle between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has come to an end with the two rival chip companies settling all outstanding IP and antitrust lawsuits. Intel and AMD have agreed on a five-year cross licensing and all the claims they had made against each other now stand cancelled and AMD gets $1.25bn and Intel agrees to follow a set of business practice provisions. All litigations pending in the US District Court in Delaware and cases in Japan were dropped by AMD and it is withdrawing all regulatory complaints made to different governments of the world. The settlement agreement will be filed by the two companies with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cephalon Inc. and Barr Pharmaceuticals settle patent dispute Cephalon Inc. and Barr Pharmaceuticals, which is now part of Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, have solved their patent dispute related to a pain-killer, Fentora. Cephalon Inc. will give Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. a non-exclusive, royalty-free right or license to sell a generic version of the pain drug Fentora in 2018 as part of the settlement, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission. The Fentora patent is to expire after 2019. Barr will be allowed to launch its version of Fentora, if another generic version of the drug reaches the U.S. market before October of 2018. The agreement however will not affect the status of the other Fentora patent lawsuits.
USPTO Director launches a blog The Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos has launched a blog "Director’s Forum" on 19th Nov 2009 to encourage direct discussion with the USPTO’s stakeholders and the general public. Mr Kappos wished to interact directly with the IP community through an open channel and a blog was established so that he could get feedback and exchange ideas with the general public.
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