Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will present a free webinar, “Advanced Obviousness Analysis: Understanding the Reasonable Expectation of Success Doctrine,” featuring Fitch Even attorneys David A. Gosse and Margaret “Peggy” Wojkowski.

The event will be on Thursday, May 31, 2018, at 9:00 am PDT / 10:00 am MDT / 11:00 am CDT / 12 noon EDT.

When an invention combines previously known features, non-obviousness turns on whether the person having ordinary skill in the art would have a reason to make the combination. This analysis requires considering whether the ordinarily skilled person would have a reasonable expectation of success in combining the known features, the firm said in a release.

Recent Federal Circuit cases provide guidance in successfully arguing for patentability under this doctrine and establish that it applies even when obviousness is asserted based on a single reference. Successfully arguing obviousness in patent prosecution, post-issuance proceedings, and district court litigation depends on this analysis with increasing frequency.

In addition to discussing applicable cases, the event will explore these issues:
• When do circumstances favor arguing reasonable expectation of success at the PTAB and during patent examination?
• What types of evidence are helpful or needed to support the arguments?
• How can patents be drafted to establish that skilled persons would not have expected success by modifying the known art?

Register for the webinar.

In a recent Initial Determination, an administrative law judge ruled that a patent owner did not have standing to sue without joining a third party to which certain rights had been transferred, reports Jones Day.

Daniel Kazhdan and Blaney Harper discuss Certain Audio Processing Hardware, Software, and Products Containing the Same.

Andrea Electronics Corp filed a complaint asserting that a number of companies, including Apple Inc., infringed its patents by importing certain products. It was undisputed that Andrea held formal title of the patents, but Apple argued that Andrea did not hold “all substantial rights in the patents-in-suit,” as required by Diamond Coating Technologies, LLC v. Hyundai Motor America.

Read the article.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will present a free webinar, “Avoiding Prosecution Churn: When Ex Parte PTAB Appeals Make Dollars and Sense,” featuring Fitch Even partner Thomas F. Lebens and Anticipat founder Trent Ostler.

The event will be Wednesday, March 21, 2018 , at 9 am PDT / 10 am MDT / 11 am CDT / 12 noon EDT.

During the process of acquiring patent rights through the patent application process, applicants sometimes wish to seek review of rejections by an examiner. The formal mechanism for achieving this review is an ex parte appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB). Some patent practitioners avoid the ex parte review process, viewing it as lengthy and expensive. But, data and experiences recently compiled by an AIPLA subcommittee suggest that this conventional thinking may be incorrect. It turns out that pursuing an appeal can be a more attractive option than other patent prosecution procedures.

During this webinar, presenters will explore how the AIPLA findings may provide guidance on
• When to file ex parte PTAB appeals
• How often to file these appeals
• Which issues to choose to appeal

Additional topics will include
• USPTO incentives
• Working with the examiner
• Patent term adjustment
• Pre-appeal brief reviews
• Other relevant statistics

Register for the webinar.

A recent written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeals Board sheds light on how the PTAB may treat common sense as used in obviousness arguments, reports Jones Day in its PTAB Litigation Blog.

Albert Liou discusses the recent case of Kranos Corporation v. Riddell, Inc., which involves the claimed invention of a sports helmet with a quick release connector for the faceguard. An important claim element was the “releasable coupler mechanism.”

“The Kranos decision teaches Petitioners to avoid relying only upon ‘common sense’ as a reason for combining references.” Liou writes. “Rather, an effective Petition should lead the PTAB to conclude that ‘common sense’ supports obviousness, after presenting the PTAB with a persuasive showing of why the elements or structure of one reference should be combined with those of another.”

Read the article.

ContractWorks will present a complimentary webinar, “Surviving the NDA Nightmare: Managing Legal & Logistical Problems,” on Thursday, February 22, 2018, at 11 AM PST.

The non-disclosure agreement is among the most crucial and the riskiest of all agreements handled by general counsel and their teams, ContractWorks says on its website. Webinar presenters will discuss how to overcome common challenges when working with NDAs, minimize legal and logistical problems associated with them and save on overall time spent managing the NDA process.

The webinar will cover:

• How to identify common and unforeseen risks in your NDAs
• How to mitigate the risks your NDAs carry
• How to utilize software to improve your process, save time, and enhance security

Anyone who is unable to participate in the live webinar may register anyway, and receive a recording after the webinar.

Register for the webinar.

By Christopher Barnett
Scott & Scott LLP

In order to effectively manage their software usage and to mitigate compliance exposure, companies need to know how to gather and analyze information regarding their product usage. While some software products may have unique data-collection requirements that ordinarily would not be applicable for other products, usage levels for many products can be measured using a common set of reports that companies can prepare themselves to gather. The purpose of this and other posts in this series of blog entries is to give companies insight regarding how to gather those datasets and why that information is relevant to their licensing obligations.
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The backbone of deployment data for many products is a list of all devices in an IT environment capable of running or interacting with a licensed software product. This inventory should include all physical and virtual workstations and servers. In many cases, it also should include devices like thin clients that may not be capable of running installed copies of software, but that can be used to access software deployed in server environments. The list also should include information regarding the make and model of each device as well as the make, model and quantity of processors and processor cores for physical servers and virtualization hosts. (Note that information regarding virtualization environments will be discussed in a separate entry in this series.) Finally, in order to validate the completeness of the principal hardware inventory, it almost always is a good idea to obtain a secondary inventory from a source like Active Directory or an antivirus solution.

Tools

Most companies use automated, software-based inventory tools in order to gather information regarding the hardware and software present in their IT environments. Using tools is not absolutely necessary – especially in very small environments – where a physical machine count, purchasing records, and change logs may provide sufficient information to allow a company to know what it owns. However, tool-based inventories almost always represent a best practice, since manually maintained reports should be audited against other data sources. Furthermore, it is typically much less practical to maintain a software inventory manually, and the tools used to gather software-installation data for an environment typically can provide all the information needed for a hardware inventory.

The tools used will vary depending on the types of software being run in the environment and on the way that the IT resources are configured. For example, an “agentless” tool – which consists of a centralized installation that uses communication protocols to remotely gather information from other machines on a network – may be the best choice for companies that have relatively simple networks with limited numbers of domain-administrator-level credentials that can be used to access all connected devices. Agentless tools usually are less expensive and easier to deploy than other kinds of solutions. Microsoft’s MAP Toolkit is a free, agentless tool and is one of the most widely used solutions for gathering information regarding Windows-based environments. Spiceworks is another, popular, agentless tool.

However, in some cases, an agentless tool may be a bad fit. Some environments may be based on global deployments residing within multiple different domains that do not share a common set of administrative credentials. Alternatively, it may be necessary for an environment to be highly segmented for security reasons, with that segmentation effectively preventing an agentless tool from gathering information from resources in other segments. In these circumstances, an “agent-based” tool – consisting of a centralized management console and multiple, small “agent” installations on each computer deployed within an environment – may be a better fit. In that scenario, the agents typically do a more thorough job of gathering information regarding the machines where they are installed and often can be used to remotely manage those machines in addition to simply gathering data. Furthermore, agent-based tools can take advantage of encryption technology and a wider variety of communication protocols to avoid the kinds of network-configuration obstacles that may prevent agentless tools from providing meaningful information. Unfortunately, all of that functionality comes at a cost, as agent-based tools often are much more expensive and much more difficult to successfully install and configure. Ivanti IT Asset Management (formerly known as LANDESK) is a very popular agent-based tool. IBM’s License Metric Tool is another well-known (perhaps infamous) agent-based tool that may be required for companies using certain kinds of IBM software in certain kinds of environments.

Some smaller companies may not want to invest the capital or resources to deploy an IT asset discovery tool but still may not want to rely on manually-maintained inventories. In those circumstances, it may be feasible to gather information using scripts or system queries that provide the same kind of information as automated tools, but via an ad hoc process. In Windows-based environments, PowerShell queries can deliver a wealth of information regarding machines residing with the same Active Directory architecture and also regarding the users accessing those machines. System queries also play an important role in environments running Oracle software. Oracle’s License Management Services (LMS) auditors have identified a number of “verified” third-party tools capable of gathering information useful for managing Oracle license compliance. However, the most common way to gather Oracle usage data (and the way preferred by Oracle LMS) is via a set of proprietary scripts and queries that are made available during an Oracle audit. Unfortunately, Oracle LMS does not make the full set of tools publicly available, though Oracle does offer a free Database Option and Management Pack Usage script here.

In addition to the primary discovery tool, companies also should identify a secondary source of information regarding the devices running within their networks. The purpose of this kind of secondary source is to provide a means to measure the completeness of the primary inventory. If there are machines identified in the secondary inventory that are not being captured by the primary inventory tool, then a company knows either that the secondary inventory is over-inclusive and needs to be cleaned up or (more critically) that the company needs to continue deploying or configuring the primary tool to capture all of the company’s computers. Given the limited purpose of the secondary inventory, it may consist of reporting out of a variety of different tools or systems and really needs to consist only of a list of machines and (preferably) the operating systems running on those machines. There are a number of Active Directory queries that can be used in order to generate such a list. Other possible sources of information are lists of machines managed by an anti-virus solution or lists of machines identified within procurement or change-management systems.

Finding the right discovery tool for an IT environment can be a time-consuming and even expensive undertaking, but it is an important one. Most companies need to have a software-based tool for gathering the information required to maintain compliance with their license agreements. However, it also is important to keep in mind the fact that no tool is a silver bullet for compliance. All tools must be periodically tested on a regular basis to ensure that they are working properly. Furthermore, while many tools offer license-management functions, those functions face a dynamic obstacle in the form of software publishers’ ever-evolving license metrics and rules. In order to ensure compliance, it always is necessary to reconcile inventory data against the most current iteration of those rules, and that analysis may need to be a manual one.

Tom Petty
Image by musicentropy

A music publishing company has filed a lawsuit in California federal court that alleges that Spotify is using tens of thousands of popular songs without a license and compensation, reports Billboard.

Reporter Eriq Gardner writes that Wixen Music Publishing is seeking damages worth at least $1.6 billion plus injunctive relief.

The report says Wixen administers song compositions by Tom Petty, Zach De La Rocha and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, David Cassidy, Neil Young, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Stevie Nicks, and many others.

During 2017, Spotify was hit by lawsuits from some other songwriters.

Read the Billboard article.

Anderson Duff, writing for Revision Legal, discusses coexistence agreements, which are contracts whereby two trademark owners agree to use their similar marks, but agree to limitations.

“The purpose of the coexistence agreement is to set out the agreement of the disputing trademark owners about use of the marks,” he explains. “Most often, the coexistence agreement will limit the use of the similar marks to certain geographical territories or to certain types of good or products.”

He discusses the historic coexistence contract involving the trademarks “Sun-Maid” and “Sun-Kist.”

The article also explains the importance of careful drafting of coexistence agreements.

Read the article.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will present a free webinar, “Widening Your Moat: Using Continuation Applications to Protect Commercially Successful Products,” featuring Fitch Even partners Jonathan H. Urbanek and Mark A. Borsos.

The event will be Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017, at 9 am PDT / 10 am MDT / 11 am CDT / 12 noon EDT.

CLE credit has been approved for California, Illinois, and Nebraska. Other states may also award CLE credit upon attendee request. There is no fee to attend, but registration is required. Register at http://bit.ly/FitchEven_SeptWebinar

Protecting a commercially successful product is critical for any business. Although patents can help to prevent others from utilizing covered technology, recent trends in case law and post-issuance validity challenges introduced by the American Invents Act have made it more difficult for businesses to effectively enforce patents against competitors. Continuation applications can be an important tool for bolstering patent protection for key products, providing the patent owner leverage in negotiations and enforcement.

This webinar will provide tips and strategies on how to use continuation applications to
• Limit design-arounds that use similar technology
• Target commercial products
• Expand the scope of patent protection
• Mitigate invalidity challenges
• Avoid antitrust pitfalls

Following the live event, a recording of the webinar will be available to view for one year at www.fitcheven.com.

Register for the webinar.

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In a legal battle that’s been underway since 2013, a federal judge ruled this week that Costco owes Tiffany & Co. a settlement of $19.4 million for selling diamond rings confusingly labeled as “Tiffany” in its stores, Forbes reports.

Forbes contributor Rachelle Bergstein explains that, while a jury found in Tiffany & Co’s favor in September of 2015, Costco continued to argue that its use of the name “Tiffany” referred to a generic style of ring, and not to the storied luxury house itself.

She writes that, while the suit sounds like a case of an elite, heritage brand pummeling a mass-market retailer for using its name to sell merchandise, it’s also a noteworthy example of how selling specialized products without a deep understanding of them can be disastrous (and potentially quite expensive) for the retailer.

Read the Forbes article.

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By Keli Swan
Scott & Scott, LLP

In an effort to enforce the copyrights of its members, Business|The Software Alliance (BSA) offers the potential for monetary rewards to any informant that shares information related to software copyright infringement against a company. Many of our clients are facing audits because an informant has turned them in.

Even if a company is able to demonstrate that its software is properly licensed, it is difficult to hold the informant accountable for the time and expense incurred as a result of the audit because the BSA protects the identity of its informants.

There are a few tips on how to deal with disgruntled former employees seeking revenge through a BSA reward.

1) Prevention. In many instances prevention simply is not possible because a company learns of the potential informant at the same time it receives an audit demand from the BSA. However, if you have not yet received an audit request, a company should manage its network to protect against potential claims.

Lock down the network. Limiting the individuals who are able to access, download, or install software, scanning tools or any other information to or from the network is an essential safeguard against creating potential copyright infringement claims. First, by preventing downloads, you are able to control what is installed on the network and limit it to only licensed software. Second, you can prevent any potential informants from stealing raw data from the network and delivering it to the BSA in an effort to obtain a reward. Third, limiting access to administrators ensures that an employee cannot create a compliance problem on his or her way out in an effort to damage the company.

2) Recourse. Sometimes a company may have a suspicion about who the informant is based on the timing of an acrimonious departure of a former employee and the initial audit letter. However, the BSA will not release the name of the individual. Even in litigation, it could be difficult to obtain the informant’s identity. However, if the BSA relied on specific information relating to its claims, it may be forced to identify the informant. The question remains: what is a company’s recourse?

Employee Non-disclosure Agreement. If the informant signed a non-disclosure agreement, it may be possible to pursue the individual for breaching that agreement, depending on the language of the agreement. However, even if this action is ultimately successful, a company should be mindful of the cardinal rule of litigation: never sue a poor person. Aside from the satisfaction of holding an individual accountable, the company may never receive damages or attorney’s fees.

Request Informant Not Be Rewarded. Once an audit is resolved, if a company believes that the informant may have been directly responsible for intentionally or negligently creating the compliance gap, the company should request that the informant not receive a reward. Although the BSA’s attorney typically indicates that he or she has no control over the reward, the BSA may take the information into consideration. It is important to wait to make this request after the audit is complete and a settlement is reached.

3) Mitigation. The best way to prevent current employees from turning into informants is to ensure that software compliance is a priority.

Software Asset Management. Following the audit, companies should consider implementing a comprehensive software asset management plan that includes procurement, installation, live management, internal audits, and license maintenance. Ensuring that all software is properly licensed at all times will save significant time and potential penalties from false claims. It is essential that a company maintain accurate records for all software purchases regardless of the age of the product. A plan to manage software compliance in conjunction with appropriate security protocols to prevent individuals from accessing the network or downloading or installing software is the best way to mitigate potential copyright infringement claims.

A federal judge has shot down a motion by Oracle to overturn a jury verdict that found Google’s use of Java application program interfaces (APIs) in Android was “fair use.” The verdict also rejected Oracle’s claim that the mobile system infringed its copyrights.

Ars Technica reports that U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s stinging rebuke rejected Oracle’s arguments on every front.

“The final jury charge culminated an exhaustive and iterative process of proposals by the judge followed by critiques by counsel,” Alsup wrote.

Read the article.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will host a complimentary webinar, “The Defend Trade Secrets Act: A Federal Remedy at Last,” presented by Thomas F. Lebens. The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 25, 2016, at 9 am PDT / 10 MDT / 11 am CDT / 12 noon EDT.

Congress recently passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and with President Obama’s expected signature, a federal civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation will become law, Fitch, Even says on its website. The bill will mean a shake-up for U.S. trade secrets law, which for years has been protected by a patchwork of state laws under various enactments of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. A single federal statute would move us toward applying the law uniformly nationwide, and trade secret claims could be filed in federal court. The new law, however, will not completely replace state trade secrets law, but will coexist with it. Protections for trade secrets will be more on balance with those available to patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

The webinar will address these major provisions of the Defend Trade Secrets Act:

• Ex parte seizure of property to prevent dissemination of trade secrets
• Preemption of state law prohibiting restraints on employment
• Whistleblower protections for reporting trade secret misappropriation
• Enhanced damages

CLE credit has been approved for California and Illinois and is pending in Nebraska. Other states may also award CLE credit upon attendee request.

Following the live event, a recording of the webinar will be available to view for one year at fitcheven.com.

Register for the webinar.

By Christopher Barnett
Scott & Scott LLP

Recent weeks have seen a number of news reports and announcements indicating that the Next Big Thing for audits – financial audits, at least, for the time being – is the use of artificial intelligence technologies to facilitate the analysis of large volumes of data in the context of audit-related activities. KPMG’s recent announcement was particularly noteworthy from my perspective, because it indicated that the audit firm would be deploying IBM’s Watson “cognitive computing technology” to KPMG’s professional services offerings. According to the announcement:

One current initiative is focused on employing supervised cognitive capabilities to analyze much larger volumes of structured and unstructured data related to a company’s financial information, as auditors ‘teach’ the technology how to fine-tune assessments over time. This enables audit teams to have faster access to increasingly precise measurements that help them analyze anomalies and assess whether additional steps are necessary.

IBM is, of course, one of KPMG’s biggest software-auditing clients. Big Blue regularly entrusts enterprise-level audit projects to the firm for project-management, data-collection and data-analysis responsibilities.

All of these recent reports mention that the AI technologies currently are being contemplated for use in connection with financial audits. However, it is not at all difficult to imagine the same or similar tools being put into use in connection with software audits, which for larger organizations also can require auditors to process vast quantities of deployment and usage information. In that context, KPMG’s and IBM’s announcement is potentially troubling.

Auditors like KPMG and Deloitte typically characterize their roles in software audits as being independent collectors and analyzers of data. From this writer’s past experience, such assurances do not always seem to align with the standard operating procedures for many audits, where doubts of all degrees almost always are resolved in favor of the software publishers paying the auditors’ bills. However, that concern would be compounded if, in the future, auditors were to merely feed deployment data into an AI tool developed by the publisher of the products being audited and to then transmit the output to IBM. Under those circumstances, the auditors arguably would be nothing more than project planners and button-pushers.

Furthermore, we increasingly are seeing auditors insist on broad rights to “access” their customers’ computers during audits, and we also have started to see indications that some publishers may be moving toward requiring the use of specific tools to measure usage during audits. Companies need to realize that any such access or tool-deployment rights in publishers’ favor almost certainly would run counter to licensees’ best interests. Such terms must be avoided at all costs.

It will be very interesting to see in coming years how new developments in technology change the scope of software audits and processes they entail.

Jonathan Hudis, a partner in Quarles & Brady LLP‘s Intellectual Property Practice Group, recently edited “A Legal Strategist’s Guide to Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Practice, Third Edition,” published by the Intellectual Property Law Section of the American Bar Association.

In the book, trademark lawyers and specialists who practice before the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board share insights and analysis from their years of practice. Each chapter also includes a checklist of items to consider during each stage of a Board proceeding.

Hudis practices in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, helping clients of all sizes establish and grow trademark and copyright portfolios, design and implement procedures to protect their intellectual capital, resolve foreign and domestic disputes, preserve trade secrets, and formulate companywide IP strategies and policies. Well-versed in trademark prosecution and registered copyright protection matters, he formerly served as an adjunct professor of trademark and unfair competition law at the George Mason University School of Law.

Hudis is particularly knowledgeable about Internet-related trademark and copyright protection matters and is a member of several arbitration panels in the areas of Internet domain names.

“The information these authors provide is an invaluable resource for anyone who is involved in litigating proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and I am thankful to the Intellectual Property Law Section of the American Bar Association for asking me to be involved,” said Hudis.

WB Mills, PLLC announces the addition of Cynthia Dashiell as of counsel to the Dallas-based IP law firm.

With her addition to the firm, WB Mills, PLLC, expands its trademark, copyright and business litigation practice to include patent law, the firm says in a release. Dashiell also works in  trademark and copyright law.

In a release, the firm says Dashiell has more than 10 years of experience as an intellectual property attorney and spent nine years as an engineer in the areas of industrial, manufacturing and safety engineering. In her practice, Dashiell prepares patent applications (provisional, non-provisional and design) in the electrical and mechanical arts in various technological areas including: telecommunications (both packet switched and circuit switched), medical, thermal insulation, HVAC, agricultural and food processing equipment and software implementations. Additionally, Dashiell provides patent validity analysis and has experience with reexamination proceedings.

Dashiell also prepares and prosecutes trademark applications with the United Sates Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

“We are honored to have Cynthia join our firm as Of Counsel. With her strong knowledge and understanding of both patents and intellectual property, she will prove an extraordinary asset to the firm as we continue to grow,” said Wendy B. Mills, Attorney and Manager of WB Mills, PLLC.

A 2003 graduate of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas, Dashiell graduated cum laude, was a staff member on the Texas Wesleyan Law Review, and served as a member of the Phi Delta Phi International Legal Honor Fraternity. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University.

According to 10 judges of the Federal Circuit, a patent owner’s right to sue for infringement in the United States is not exhausted by sales of products abroad or by sales subject to valid post-sale contractual restrictions on use, write David Tellekson, Stefan Szpajda and Phillip K. Decker of Fenwick & West LLP.

The case is Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Impression Prods, Inc., Nos. 2014-1617, slip op. (Fed. Cir. Feb. 12, 2016).

In a 10-2 en banc decision, the Circuit court held that U.S. patent rights need not be expressly reserved in foreign sales transactions to preserve the right to sue for infringement if the goods enter the United States downstream of the point of sale.

“Although the Federal Circuit’s decision purports to maintain the status quo regarding patent exhaustion, Lexmark has immediate implications for patentees, licensees, and downstream consumers alike,” the authors write.

Read the article.

Quarles & Brady has added Shen Wang and Hao Tan to the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the firm’s Chicago office.

In a release, the firm says Wang focuses his practice on preparing and prosecuting patent applications in the U.S. and abroad. He has experience in computer software, network, and printer control technologies. He also has experience litigating patent and International Trade Commission (ITC) Section 337 cases, as well as with client counseling, including patent analysis and opinion.

Hao works with clients in Asia and U.S. to obtain IP protections all over the world. Hao has drafted freedom-to-operate, non-infringement, patentability, and invalidity opinions. In addition to his prosecution work, he provides advice to prospective and existing clients about patent strategies in the U.S. and China. He has handled patent appeals before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Wang received his law degree from Washington University School of Law, his M.B.A. from Washington University Olin Business School, his master’s degree from Old Dominion University, and his bachelor’s degree from Beijing Normal University.

Hao received his law degree from Chicago Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and his master’s and bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Intellectual property is often a company’s most valuable asset, and for companies with federal government customers, following the government’s rules can mean the difference between maximizing and losing value in newly developed IP, reports McGuireWoods in a legal alert.

Christian B. Nagel, Todd R. Steggerda, Ronald L. Fouse, David G. Dargatis and Lorna J. Tang wrote the article.

Their article addresses rights in technical data and computer software.

Contractors “should place the highest priority on reviewing, understanding and, if possible, negotiating IP terms prior to signing any government contract,” they write. “After the contract has been executed, the contractor should ensure that at least one member of its legal or management team understands the applicable IP rules and ensures strict compliance throughout contract performance.”

Read the article.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater has entered a judgment of $9.6 million for medical products manufacturer ThermoTek Inc. after a jury found that a competitor fraudulently obtained the company’s business information for a series of physical therapy machines.

ThermoTek is the Flower Mound, Texas-based manufacturer of VascuTherm2, Vascutherm4 and other products that are used in the treatment of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and other medical conditions.

In 2010, ThermoTek was sued by a distributor, which alleged faulty manufacture.

ThermoTek’s lawyers from the Dallas-based law firm Rose•Walker managed to move the case to Dallas, where Judge Fitzwater dismissed a number of the original claims. The attorneys then brought a counterclaim, alleging plaintiffs fraudulently obtained ThermoTek’s business information in order to design and sell their own products. During the litigation, some of the plaintiffs were sanctioned for failing to produce documents.

Read more details about the case.