Law Office of Alicia Porter

Law.com posted an Associated Press article today about the latest status in this litigation. Bratz are a series of dolls that Mattel, the makers of Barbie, alleged infringed upon Barbie’s likeness and diluted their market share.

Apparently, the person who came up with the Bratz concept did so while working for Mattel, and then left the company and produced the dolls with MGA. As a result, litigation ensued, and a $100 million verdict was awarded.

As per the Law.com/Associated Press link, the federal judge upheld the $100 million award in favor of Mattel. Click here for the full link.

Intellectual property can take all types of twists and turns. One of the most, ahem, colorful ones that was recently filed in Colorado was Infomedia v. Air-O-Matic in the United States District Court in Colorado, case number 09-CV-00302 that was filed on February 13, 2009.

The case centers around a feature created by Infomedia that can be added to the IPhone, whereby the user of the phone can download the Ifart feature, which is designed to discourage IPhone theft. In the complaint, Infomedia is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court on whether or not it infringes on the trademark or unfairly competes with the AOM “Pull My Finger” IPhone application.

Click here

Law.com had a recent article about the Silvaco Data Systems versus Circuit Semantics Inc. (CSI) Silvaco has taken the extreme measure of suing Circuit Semantics semiconductor customers as well, over the issue of stolen trade secrets.

In short, Silvaco alleged that customers who purchased the CSI software product received the Silvaco company’s program’s source code, which was a trade secret, and that the CSI customers should have known about the purloined trade secrets when they purchased the product.

For the full link, please see http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202428300991

There was an interesting article about the volume of patent litigation that is increasing recently. Click here for the link!