Battle of the I's: Ixia v. Ineoquest

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/ineoquest-wins-trade-secret-case,1013451.shtml

The company Ixia has brought on multiple lawsuits against Ineoquest involving multiple things, including trade secrets. In the most recent ruling, the court sided entirely with the defendant Ineoquest, and have asked for the court to order Ixia to pay for their fees.

One of the things Ixia was trying for ward to get Ineoquest to stop doing business with a slew of clients that they believed to be their own, and considered it a trade secret breach, but the court found this to be untrue.

Apple and Psystar's trade secret agreement

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/02/apple-and-psystar-finally-agreeto-keep-trade-secrets-secret.ars

There has been a fierce battle between Apple and the company Psystar that resulted in a lawsuit over a computer that Psystar was distributing that Apple deemed to be a clone of their own. This article has nothing to do with that, however, and everything to do with how trade secrets are shared and handled.

They have agreed to define exactly what is meant by trade secret laws in this case. Any file labelled "Confidential" will be considered something that can be seen by attorney's and up to two employees in either company, and anything labelled "Confidential - Attorney's Eyes Only" will limit it to being seen by only the attorney and court. This is a pretty vital step in a long and ongoing case.

It may seem a bit unnecessary, since it isn't really a case dealing with trade secrets, but the fact that they needed to specify how information is handled in court to prevent any trade secret infringement shows exactly how important these trade secrets are to companies.

AAA cybersquatting case

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091022/NEWS02/310219845/-1/NEWS03

This news article also has to do with a company called AAA. However, this version of AAA is an auto club, as opposed to the AAA Apartment locating service that is in a dispute with First Call, as detailed in the post before this. It is important to note that this is completely legal within IP law, since they are not in the same field and therefore not competing with one another, it is perfectly legal for two companies to own the same set of letters and claim it as their own intellectual property. 

On to the article: A man from Erie is being accused of cybersquatting for holding on to the domain name AAA.net, when the company AAA would like it to link to their own site, AAA.com. The case has been settled, and James Van Johns (The previous owner of AAA.net and nominee for coolest name of the year, as awarded by myself) has been forced by the courts to hand over the rights to the domain AAA.net, but hasn't been ordered to pay any extra money, since it was decided that his intent was not malicious. 

This applies to what we have been learning in class because of the cybersquatting laws that we have learned about. Although the article doesn't specify what business or reason James Van Johns owned that applied to the AAA business, although it implied that he was simply using it as a way to make ad revenue from people who ended up there by mistake. If he had a legitimate business under that name, then it would have been a different issue. 

First Call v. Craigslist

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110553

The previous lawsuit that First Call had against Craigslist dealt with a trademark violation in May, and had to do with an ad that was put on the Craigslist site. First Call has a trademark for their name in the real estate business, and Craigslist agreed to post ads from a different real estate agency, AAA Apartment Locating, that contained the phrases "First call", "Call first" and "Call us first", which First Call says were deliberately used to confuse the customer. However, recently, First Call has decided to drop this lawsuit, but are still holding strong in a case against AAA Apartment Locating for trademark infringement. 

This deals with trademark directly, although there is an interesting spin on who is liable for what. Craigslist didn't create the ads, they were merely a host. The article notes that this is the first time Craigslist has been sued for user created content, but it isn't the first time it has happened on the internet, citing Google and other search engines as repeat offenders, being sued for allowing ads to contain trademarked terms to gain hits. Even though AAA Apartment Locating could very easily be guilty, I don't think Craigslist would have been in much trouble, since websites are usually exempt from legal issues dealing with what is posted on them. This is probably why First Call chose to drop the lawsuit all together. 

IBM patents electronic checkbox.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/49348

Here is a slightly older news article, from late 2007, about a ridiculous patent case involving computer giants IBM. Apparently, IBM tried to patent the idea of an electronic checkbox; more specifically, the type of electronic checkbox where you drag your mouse through multiples of them and they select that way. The patenting of this type of checkbox was successful, because although the idea of checking a box is nothing new, and even the idea of checking a box using a mous is not new, the idea of being able to drag a mouse across multiple of these boxes and using this movement to check multiple boxes is technically novel, and fits within the four patent checks.

It does seem a bit like they are trying to abuse their ability to patent, and this article reflects this opinion, by mentioning the Patent Reform Act of 2007 that was created to help stop the abuse of patents. A line must be drawn between what is a sincere novel item that is beneficial to society and financially beneficial to the creator, and what is a money hungry patent that is basically a set-up to a lawsuit should anyone try to use this technology.

Uniloc v. Microsoft

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_bi_ge/us_microsoft_uniloc_patents_4

In searching for news that dealt with patent cases in new media, it was impossible to avoid the issue that is currently going on with Microsoft, because there are updates posted to every news site at least twice a day. The case has been running for six years, and is still going strong, as the company Uniloc is trying to sue Microsoft for using a code that makes it impossible to install software on multiple machines. Uniloc claims that they had a patent on the software code that created a similar function, and that the code by Microsoft is similar in multiple parts.

Initially, a jury awarded Uniloc $388 million, but this was recently taken back by a federal court who stated that this number didn't properly account for the money lost in the patent case.

The first case was decided by a jury, and it makes me wonder how a court expects this sort of issue to be handled by people off the street, when even a media student who is experienced in patent law is a bit boggled by the six years of back and forth debate between these two major players in new media. This makes the idea of patent centered court seem positive, because it would be experienced people only dealing with this very complex section of the law, even though there are many arguments against keeping a patent centered court.