October 2012

seedling.jpgIPNews® – The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that it will hear a soybean farmer’s appeal of his loss in Monsanto Co.’s patent infringement lawsuit over his planting of second-generation descendants of Monsanto’s genetically modified patented seeds.

The case will test the limits of how far patent protection extends for self-replicating technologies like seeds. In

youtube.jpgIPNews® – YouTube LLC on Wednesday announced it is making changes to its Content ID copyright enforcement system to improve the appeals process for users targeted for infringement and takedown claims, as well as the technology that detects unintentional claims and matches copyrighted content to videos uploaded.

Users will now have an extra stage of

kumquat_tree_.jpgIPNews® – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is increasingly issuing denials of “green” trademark applications based on deceptive claims of environmental friendliness, attorneys report.

While the PTO says the reports are incorrect and there has been no official change in its approach to green trademarks, the office already has the authority to refuse registration

microsoft-building.jpgIPNews® – Motorola Mobility LLC’s Android devices do not infringe a Microsoft Inc.-held European patent for a radio interface used to help apps maintain compatibility across devices, a German court ruled Friday.

The ITC ruled earlier this year that the U.S. equivalent of the European patent is valid but not infringed by Motorola’s devices. The

headphones2.jpgIPNews® – Apple Inc. is trying to obtain patent protection for a listening device like a set of headphones that could immediately and automatically switch from being plugged into a media player to operating wirelessly, according to an application the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Thursday.

The patent application, filed in March 2011, discloses

medical.jpgIPNews® – Hologic Inc. said Thursday that its Gen-Probe unit has prevailed in a patent infringement lawsuit against Becton Dickinson over sexually transmitted disease tests.

San Diego federal judge Roger T. Benitez granted Gen-Probe summary judgment on its infringement claims regarding patents for chlamydia and gonorrhea testing. A trial on the remaining issues in the

spawn.jpgIPNews® – Legendary comic book creator and artist Todd McFarlane attacked an ex-employee in Arizona federal court last week for trademark and copyright infringement, after the ex-employee published a book claiming to have inspired McFarlane’s popular Spawn character in the 1990s.

Ex-employee Al Simmons gave McFarlane permission in 1992 to use his name as the

library_.jpgIPNews® – Google Inc. announced Thursday that it has put to rest the Association of American Publishers’ long-running copyright infringement case over Google’s scanning and digitization of copyrighted material for its online book archive project.

Under the deal, publishers will be able to choose whether to make their scanned books available digitally through Google if