-
-
Case Review
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Nearly all companies today employ someone to get the word out about the company on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. These sites offer a direct and inexpensive way to reach millions of consumers across the world. Like many areas of intellectual property law, though, company social media efforts are still in a gray area when it comes to who owns what, and a lawsuit pitting one company against its former employee and his Tweets may decide some of these issues companies are struggling with. PhoneDog is a website that reviews mobile devices and mobile apps. Noah Kravitz worked for PhoneDog for four years, using his company’s Twitter account to accumulate a bevy of followers who enjoyed his perspective on mobile developments. Kravtiz left PhoneDog towards the end of 2010 and changed his Twitter handle from “@Phonedog_Noah” to “@NoahKravitz.” And with that simple handle change, Kravitz also took his…
Read More »
Google received some favorable news at the end of 2011 when it learned that the US Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) turned down many of Oracle’s patent claims. Oracle had sued Google in 2010, claiming that Google’s Android operating system violated several Java patents that Oracle holds. Google made the argument that we often hear in intellectual property disputes that a company (Oracle, according to Google) was actually trying to stifle innovation by filing “bogus patents” to prevent people from encroaching on their work. The PTO rejected 17 out of the 21 claims that Oracle had made in its patent application. Claims are one of the more important parts of a patent application, for they determine the scope of the protection that a company can receive. The claim is exactly what the invention does and how it does it; anything outside this claim does not receive protection, so companies need…
Read More »
Artists may run across the so-called “poor man’s copyright” in their search for how to protect their works, which fall under the copyright area of intellectual property law. The idea behind the poor man’s copyright is to cheaply guarantee protection for your work so that, if you have to prove that something is originally your idea, you have evidence. The process is that you put your work into a sealed envelope, mail it to yourself and then keep the work unsealed in the envelope. The post-stamped envelope then supposedly serves as proof that you had the original work as of the date on the envelope. Unfortunately, this is not an effective way of guaranteeing your copyright. For one, a person can fake this pretty easily. For example, you could mail yourself an unsealed envelope and then seal whatever you want inside of it at a later date. In a court…
Read More »