Tech Legal Week: Rambus Loses Micron Suit, Class Action Suit against Apple, More
Judge tosses Rambus claims against Micron -- It's never a good idea to destroy documents a judge might want. And a federal judge, ruling that Rambus's destruction of materials related to its patent infringement suit against Micron was "obstructive at best, misleading at worst," said that former could not enforce its patents against the latter. Rambus stock dropped by 38 percent; the company plans to appeal. [Source: Reuters]
Yet another class action suit targeting Apple -- A law suit by a customer may turn into another class action suit. This time it's not about the iPhone but iMac displays. Supposedly some are showing vertical lines and Apple won't fix them, saying that either they are past the warranty period or the result of something other than a design or defect. [Source: AppleInsider]
Google wins trademark lawsuit in China -- Last week it was Microsoft prevailing against alleged software pirates in China. Now it's Google forcing Beijing Guge Science and Technology to pay Google money and to stop using the Guge name, because the search company's Chinese subsidiary is "Gu Ge." [Source: Search Engine Land]
Google on other end of suit -- Liskula Cohen, a high fashion model, is suing Google in an attempt to get the name of an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" and "old hag." [Source: New York Daily News]
Oprah sued for -- patent infringement -- Illinois Computer Research is suing Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions for allegedly infringing a patent on displaying "a three-dimensional representation of a good being sold, that three-dimensional representation being viewable from a number of different directions," and said good including books and the display of the book pages. The Prior Art also mentions a precursor to this suit. The method's inventor, a lawyer, supposedly sued Google, which was a client of the firm for which he worked. Up until then. [Source: The Prior Art]
Patent suits moving on out -- Many patent litigants have found the Eastern District of Texas a favorable federal court in which to file suit. But the court there recently transferred a case out to Ohio, possibly to help reduce the backlog of cases involving no party that is actually in Texas. [Source: TechDirt]
Small firm suing 22 software and security companies -- Information Protection and Authentication of Texas has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas (at least it's in the state) against Microsoft, Symantec, CA, McAfee, Sunbelt Software, and others for patent infringement. [Source: TechDirt]