Samsung recently refused to abide by a court order to reveal its code, and now, it has harmed its legal case. Apple requested – and the court agreed to permit it – to see Samsung’s code regarding two features of Samsung’s Android smartphones – the “bounce back” that happens when you reach the end of a list you are scrolling down, and the “blue glow” that occurs when you highlight a line item from a menu.

Samsung did not release its code in time, so now the court has ruled that Samsung cannot introduce any evidence that it specifically tried to work around Apple’s patents. Samsung’s original code, not its redesigned, recent code, will be all that matters now. If the court finds that is in fact infringing on Apple’s patents, both Samsung’s original code and its new patent work around code will have to go.

Have you been involved in a patent dispute? How did you ultimately settle the matter?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

These allegations led to a class action lawsuit against EA, which the video game giant eventually settled for $14.9 million. EA is far from the only target, though, as video game developers have claimed that crunch time is a common occurrence at many video game companies.

In the past, California companies had avoided paying overtime to these video game workers during crunch time because the workers were salaried and, thus, exempt from overtime payments. California amended its laws governing exempt employees, and now, in order to be exempt from overtime requirements, a software developer has to make above a certain hourly wage. At the time of the amendment in 2007, the hourly wage was $36 an hour, amounting to about $75,000 a year.

Another problem with crunch time periods of work is that it may not be terribly effective. When creative individuals are working under extreme stress and little sleep, their work tends to suffer, and the video game may suffer as a result. And, as happened with the EA employee mentioned at the start, crunch time can hurt families as well.

How does your tech company balance work and play?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyer

Some of the spending drop has been a shift away from traditional video game consoles towards new tech trends like games on social media sites or other platforms like smart phones and tablets. What some have also found is that lots of people who own video game consoles now do not even use them for video games, but for services like Netflix or for use as a media center to play music and watch movies.

Another problem is the age of today’s consoles, which first started appearing on shelves seven years ago. The Xbox 360 came out in 2005, and the Wii and Playstation 3 came out the next year. The only new console on the horizon is Nintendo’s Wii U, reportedly coming out later in 2012. The Wii U will be taking full advantage of the technological developments and popular trends in recent years. Its controller has an embedded touchscreen on it. Nintendo also expects to have an app store for the console, which, amongst other things, will sell e-books.

Are you involved in the video game industry? How have you adjusted to recent trends in the video game and tech worlds?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

How video games are born

Many games, particularly blockbuster hits, do come from large developers working under contract with other large companies (publishers). In many cases, the publishers own the developers outright so that the publishers can brainstorm, develop and publish video games in-house. These games require the type of money and team (often up to 100 people) that most individuals or small groups of friends simply do not have.

Outside of big game development, however, there has been growing room for independent developers. Developers like Big Fish Games can put out games for computers or social media sites on their own by financing their works themselves or by receiving funds from a publisher. It is often easier for independent video game developers to get started on a small or more accessible platform like computers or internet sites. Just obtaining the right to develop games for a console like the Wii, 360 or PlayStation 3 requires several thousands of dollars, and the manufacturer typically takes a percentage of your game’s sales.

Once development is complete, publishers and marketing experts take over in order to get your game out to the public. Regardless of the size of your video game team, take the time to protect your intellectual property and your efforts behind it.

What intellectual property or other legal concerns do you have as a video game developer?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

Online storage sites – a service many businesses and individuals on their own use – recently popped into the news after Google launched its Drive service. Similar to Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Drive lets you upload files into the cloud so that you can retrieve them anywhere in the world with a computer and access to the internet. It is an extremely convenient service, but pay attention to the terms of anything to which you agree.

Most services disclaim any ownership to your intellectual property. They will say things along the lines of: “We do not own files that you upload. Ownership rights remain with you, and we are not responsible for what you do with your files.”

Google’s terms for Drive, however, have caused a bit of a backlash. When you agree to its terms, you agree to grant Google a license to use your content. Google agrees that it is your content, but it says that it can do what it wants with your files, including rights to “use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works…, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Several of these rights Google claims are rights reserved to copyright owners under copyright law. What intellectual property concerns do you have regarding online storage sites and other similar technologies?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

JOBS stands for “Jumpstart our Business Startups,” and its aim is to improve the ability of smaller companies to go public. Here are several of the ways in which the JOBS Act makes things easier for smaller companies (under $1 billion in gross revenues):

• Companies can use “crowd funding,” which is accepting money from smaller investors –  up to $1 million a year – without having to file an IPO
• For up to five years after an IPO, companies will not have to undergo an outside audit of their internal controls
• A number of other rules exempt smaller companies from regular SEC filings and from the Sarbannes Oxley requirement of “say on pay,” letting investors have a word on what their executives earn

At least for investors, though, IPOs of the dot-com era did not usually work out. Small company IPOs dominated the 1990s, yet many dot-com companies found themselves bankrupt after a few years when it turned out that they had no fundamentals to support the hype.

Are you involved in a smaller tech company? What funding sources have you relied on? Will the new legislation impact you at all?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

So spoke Twitter’s VP of engineering in conjunction with an unprecedented move by Twitter last week to give control of patents to the people behind them in the first place – engineers. The move comes in the wake of several high profile patent lawsuits that we have discussed in recent posts – Oracle v. Google, Apple v. Samsung, and Yahoo v. Facebook, to name a few.

So how is Twitter hoping to stop the intellectual property bickering? It announced that patents would stay with the inventors and not Twitter. This is a big announcement, since companies almost always make employees sign agreements stating that everything they create on company time belongs to the company. Twitter wants to allow tech innovators to keep the intellectual property rights to their inventions even after they leave the company. In this way, Twitter hopes that the patents will remain strictly for defensive use, for suing those who unlawfully use someone else’s invention, rather than for offensive use by bullying others and seeking lucrative settlements.

Will Twitter’s new IP agreement start a trend amongst tech companies, or is this too unrealistic? It might improve the reputation of smaller companies and enable them to recruit talent, but it is hard to see a megacap with billions in revenue like Microsoft or Apple even consider something like this.

How does your tech company balance innovation with intellectual property protection?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

Consider the case of tech company American Superconductor (“AMSC”). With over $300 million in revenue each year, AMSC is a leading designer and manufacturer of energy systems, including green energy like wind turbines. AMSC entered into a deal with Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Sinovel. AMSC sold Sinovel the equipment and technological know-how to design and build wind turbines.

But, according to AMSC’s lawsuits, things took a turn for the worse. Armed with all of AMSC’s expertise, Sinovel backed out of licensing deals and other contracts with AMSC. AMSC has since sued Sinovel, but at least in Chinese courts, AMSC has not had much success defending its intellectual property rights. A Chinese court has already dismissed one of its lawsuits. Meanwhile, Sinovel gets to keep AMSC’s know-how.

There are international agreements covering intellectual property, but as companies that do business in China learn, enforcing those agreements is not always easy. Has international intellectual property protection been a concern for your firm?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

The ruling comes after eight years of legal wrangling over employee breaks. The Supreme Court ruled that employees must provide lunch breaks to their employees, but that the employers were not responsible for ensuring that employees actually take a break. In other words, if an employee uses the break to do work instead of eat and rest, employees cannot sue their employers.

The ruling does not change the fact that employers still have to offer breaks. The first break must occur within five hours of the employee’s start. Employers cannot prevent or discourage their workers from taking breaks, but if an employee opts to work during his or her break, the employer is not to blame, the judges ruled unanimously.

The practical effect of the ruling is that it shifts the burden to take a break to the employee. The lawsuit stemmed from workers in the restaurant industry, but it applies to any employee who falls under California’s labor laws. (These laws do not apply to exempt employees, which are those working in certain administrative or professional jobs.) For those to whom the ruling does apply, your employer does not have to directly order you to take a break. If you should be taking a break, it is your decision what you do during it.

Will the California Supreme Court’s ruling have any effect for your business?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

As a result of deals like this and of courtroom patent battles like the one going on between Facebook and Yahoo, patent reform has been in the forefront of intellectual property news. Certainly we want to protect the money and time that companies put into inventions by granting them patents, but is the current system doing that at the expense of hindering the advancement of knowledge?

Ideas for patent reform

Here a few of the suggestions that have been floating around to deal with current problems of the patent system:

• Reduce the years that technology patents last because technology moves much quicker than other fields like pharmaceutical development whose patents need longer protection periods
• The first suggestion would have the added effect of eliminating many patent applications altogether, since presumably companies would not want to put in the time and money to patent something that will have no protection in three to five years
• Eliminate “patent trolls” – companies that sue on patent infringement grounds but do not actually do anything with the patents – by requiring that patent holders develop a patent before being able to sue for its infringement

Has your business faced patent problems stemming from our current patent system? What recommendations do you have?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers