Monthly Archives: July 2011

Starbucks is going to court after receiving threatening letters from a small, technology company located in South Dakota. South Dakota Network LLC provides internet broadband services to telephone businesses in South Dakota. It also has an office in Omaha, Nebraska, and Nebraska is the location of the federal court where Starbucks decided to sue. Companies who wish to vigorously protect their trademarks may wish to speak to an experienced Los Angeles business litigation attorney. South Dakota Network owns several trademarks involving the acronym “SDN” that the company uses to market its services. International coffee giant Starbucks uses “SDN” in its own way. For Starbucks, SDN refers to its Starbucks Digital Network, a website that visitors to Starbucks stores can use. Starbucks also has an SDN smartphone application available. South Dakota Network sent Starbucks several letters demanding that Starbucks stop using SDN to refer to a website and its smartphone application….
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The FBI recently arrested a senior software engineer on trade secrets charges. A resident of Libertyville, a northern suburb of Chicago, Chunlai Yang is a naturalized US citizen who has worked for Chicago-based CME group (“CME”) for 11 years. CME is a large financial company that runs exchanges for stocks, metals and agricultural goods, amongst other things. CME owns the Dow Jones indexes. Yang wrote computer code for CME, but, starting back in May of this year, CME became suspicious of his activities and began monitoring what he did while using CME’s computers. CME discovered that Yang had downloaded thousands of files from the company’s servers to his personal computer. According to the indictment, Yang also copied some of these files to removable storage devices like flash cards and USB thumb drives. Most of the files pertained to vital CME operations. Information on protections that trade secrets law covers is…
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Not much is beyond the realm of a trademark application these days. Recent posts have discussed Apple’s attempts to trademark “App store,” beer companies’ trademarking area codes and people engaged in legal battles over a few letters’ difference. A recent Apple trademark application now seeks protection for ‘280.’ Companies and individuals interested in learning about trademark protections can speak to a Los Angeles business litigation attorney. The application at first puzzled technology blogs and industry followers, until they reviewed the rest of Apple’s trademark application. ‘280’ evidently refers to Interstate 280 in Cupertino, California where Apple’s headquarters is. Interstate 280 is far more expansive than that, though, as the highway runs 57 miles and connects San Jose and San Francisco. Along with its application, Apple submitted an image that shows the icon that it uses for its navigation application for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. The icon for the application…
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