Yearly Archives: 2011

Factual Background When Sony released its PlayStation 3 (“PS3”) video game console, it included a feature that allowed customers to install a version of the Linux operating system so that the machine could be used as a general purpose computer. In April 2010, Sony released a system firmware update that ...

A California Privacy Right in Vehicle Data In People v. Xinos, 192 Cal. App. 4th 637 (2011) (PDF), the California Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled on a person’s privacy right in his vehicle’s sensing and diagnostic module (SDM) data. This issue is a matter of first impression in California. An ...

During the recent revolution in Egypt, the government disabled Internet access throughout the country with the flip of a switch. Could the same thing happen in America? Practically, because the structure of the Internet in the United States is more complex and decentralized than in Egypt, it cannot be shut ...

We here at the Bolt appreciate all of our readers who have found us through Google, incoming links, blog directories, and so on. We’ve always offered an RSS feed so that you can follow our posts with greater convenience, but today we’re announcing two new options for keeping Bolt updates ...

The recent settlement between the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and an ambulance service company in Connecticut is the first of its kind to set legal limits on employers’ Internet and social media policies. In December of 2009, employee Dawnmarie Souza was fired for posting negative comments on Facebook about ...

35 U.S.C. § 292 is known as the Patent False Marking Statute and contains two subsections. Subsection (a) says that it is unlawful, without the consent of the patentee, “to mark a product with, or use in advertising, a patent number in connection with products that are not patented” or no ...

In Centillion Data Systems, LLC v. Qwest Communications International (PDF), the Federal Circuit limited its doctrine that for patent infringement, “every element” of a claim needs to be infringed by a single party. Legal Background: Patent claims describe the scope of an invention. To infringe on a patent, a party ...

In the recent Uniloc v. Microsoft (PDF), the Federal Circuit made two significant changes to the standards by which a patentee can recover damages from an infringer. First, the court abolished the “25% Rule of Thumb” which had previously been used to calculate reasonable royalty rates, and second, the court ...

This January in People v. Diaz (PDF), the Supreme Court of California affirmed the Court of Appeals decision that a warrantless search of the text message folder on an arrested person’s phone was valid as incident to a lawful custodial arrest. The facts of this case are as follows: Diaz ...

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the Department of Homeland Security, engaged in another round of domain name seizures Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2011. The 18 domain name seizure, “Operation Broken Hearted,” focused on counterfeit sites for selling counterfeit luxury product brands such as Tiffany, Burberry and Channel. As ...