Yearly Archives: 2010

In the Ninth Circuit decision of Omega, S.A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., the court ruled that the first sale doctrine does not apply to imported works manufactured abroad. Costco appealed, and oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court took place in early November. The case was based on the ...

This month, our team members have been consumed with outlines, papers, and finals, and now the holidays are upon us. Although we won’t be able to write full posts on all of the recent developments in technology law, we wanted to offer some quick updates on some of the biggest ...

On December 14, 2010, the Sixth Circuit held that a search warrant is required before the government can engage in search and seizure of emails stored by an internet service provider (ISP). The government directed—without a warrant for probable cause—an ISP, NuVox, to “preserve” all Steven Warshak’s future emails without Warshak’s ...

In the recent Finjan v. Secure Computing decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed that software that is sold in locked or inactivated form can directly infringe apparatus claims even before the customer unlocks or activates the software in separate subsequent steps. The patents at issue in Finjan concern software for computer ...

In May 2007, at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, Google launched Street View, a program allowing users to navigate panoramic images of thousands of street level locations. Advocating for mapping efficiency via technological innovation, Google aspired to “provide users with a rich, immersive browsing experience in Google Maps, ...

In the recent Solvay v. Honeywell (PDF) decision, the Federal Circuit dealt with the issue of who qualifies as a prior inventor for the purpose of 35 U.S.C. § 102(g)(2). In particular, this case concerns an invention that was invented in Russia but later duplicated in the United States (“U.S.”). ...

Not only was the landmark peer-to-peer file-sharing trial involving Northern Minnesotan Jammie Thomas-Rasset the first of its kind to reach trial; Thomas-Rasset’s file-sharing litigation will likely come to its third trial on November 2, 2010. Thomas-Rasset downloaded 24 pop hits of the 1980s and 1990s and was found liable in 2007 for $222,000 in statutory ...

Privacy Expectations in the Use of GPS Tracking Devices: United States v. Maynard, No. 1:05-cr-00386-ESH-10 (Aug. 6, 2010) The recent D.C. Circuit Court decision United States v. Maynard (PDF) is one in a series of Circuit Court decisions addressing the legality of federal authorities monitoring a citizen using a GPS tracking ...

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) has been under negotiation since October 2007. Over the past three years a group of nations, including the United States, have deliberated the specific contents and composition of this document designed to establish stronger intellectual property enforcement on a global scale. At the Tokyo round ...

Current copyright law has proven inadequate to address the uses of creative works in this technological and Internet age. Today’s global environment is one of almost costless reproducibility and dissemination, low-cost production of not only written works but also musical, visual, and moving image works, and increased and varied platforms ...