Fendi, a purse and handbag brand of French luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has sued Wal-Mart in federal court, alleging that counterfeit versions of its Fendi brand bags and wallets are being sold in Sam’s Club stores. According to the complaint, Wal-Mart has never purchased Fendi products from Fendi or any entity [...]

WestJet apologized to Air Canada and will pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit over a case of corporate espionage. WestJet will pay $5.5 million to cover Air Canada’s investigation and litigation costs, and make a $10 million donation to children’s charities in the names of both airlines. The lawsuit centered around allegations that WestJet [...]

Lan Lee, 42 and Yuefei Ge, 34 of Palo Alto, CA were charged with five counts of trade secret theft and one count of conspiracy to steal trade secrets. The two workers were charged with stealing computer-chip design and development data from Mountainview-based company, NetLogic and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the leading made-to-order chip supplier. [...]

Nokia, the world’s biggest cell phone maker, has sued two Chinese competitors in its first Chinese legal action, alleging illegal product copying. In the lawsuit, Nokia is asking the court to force the two manufacturers to stop making and selling models that allegedly infringe on designs for its own midrange 7260 model. Nokia is also [...]

Jonathan Sanders, a former Corning Inc. employee, has been sentenced by US District Court to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $20,000 in connection with his guilty plea to conspiracy to commit trade secret theft. Sanders admitted selling stolen blueprints about Corning’s liquid-crystal-display glassmaking process and selling them for $34,000 [...]

Federal authorities accuse secretary Joya Williams, a Coke employee, and two ex-cons of stealing guarded information and a sample of the confidential beverage. The suspects were arrested – the day a $1.5 million transaction was to occur. In May, a letter appeared at PepsiCo’s New York headquarters, offering to sell the trade secret, and that’s [...]

In recent months, Titleist, part of Fortune Brands, has sued a number of retailers and distributors for selling counterfeit Titleist Pro V1 golf balls. These suits are the result of these entities either distributing allegedly counterfeit Titleist Pro V1 golf balls at wholesale or selling allegedly counterfeit Pro V1 golf balls in retail locations. Companies [...]

Fendi, a purse and handbag brand of French luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, sued Wal-Mart in NY federal court, alleging that counterfeit versions of its Fendi brand bags and wallets are being sold in Sam’s Club stores. According to the complaint, Wal-Mart has never purchased Fendi products from Fendi or any entity [...]

A French appeals court ruled that Google must pay approximately $383,000 in fines, plus more than $96,000 in legal fees for publishing ads advertising counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags through its AdWords contextual advertising system. Vuitton alleges that Google allowed AdWords advertisers to purchase Louis Vuitton trademarks in order to serve ads against them. Users searching [...]

The U.S. DOJ announced that it had arrested a retired Dow Chemical Co employee for allegedly conspiring to sell trade secrets to companies in China. Wen Shyu Liu, 69, was arrested by FBI agents in Seattle as he walked off a plane from Taipei. Lui, who is formerly of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, worked for Dow [...]

If you’re going to commit a crime, don’t tell anybody about it. Unfortunately, Asante Kahari didn’t listen. In United States v. Fraser, Kahari (a/k/a Aaron Fraser) was charged with perpetrating a counterfeit-check scheme. The problem is that it was the EXACT SAME SCHEME that Kahari had already written about in his “how to” book The [...]

If you’re going to commit a crime, don’t tell anybody about it. Unfortunately, Asante Kahari didn’t listen. In United States v. Fraser, Kahari (a/k/a Aaron Fraser) was charged with perpetrating a counterfeit-check scheme. The problem is that it was the EXACT SAME SCHEME that Kahari had already written about in his “how to” book The [...]

A San Diego, California, jury awarded Nortel Networks Corp $47.4 million in punitive damages in a stolen trade secret and copyright infringement case against Platinum Networks. Nortel had alleged that telecommunications equipment retailer Platinum and its president Gerald Medina had obtained a pirated copy of Nortel’s proprietary Genkey software, the lawyers said in a press [...]

Avid Identification Systems, Inc. scored a significant litigation victory in U.S District Court, Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas when a jury found two competitors liable for infringing Avid’s technology and making false advertising claims that harmed consumers. The jury awarded Avid more than $6 million in the lawsuit against European-based Datamars SA and [...]

Apple Computer suffered a setback in its effort to plug an internal leak, after a state appeals court ruled that the computer maker can’t immediately get its hands on records of who may have contacted an Apple enthusiast site with details on an unreleased product. A lower court had ruled Apple should have access to [...]

A jury has awarded Rambus $306.5 million in damages, bringing to a close its prolonged patent infringement suit against Hynix Semiconductor. Now, Rambus may find the ball in its own court with regard to two other patent infringement suits on the same technologies, against Samsung and Micron Technology. During the trial Hynix maintained that, Rambus [...]

A judge in Salt Lake City, UT has imposed sanctions on Irvine-based Gateway Incorporated for allegedly destroying evidence. The move comes on the eve of a trial in a patent-infringement lawsuit against the computer retailer. The judge warned Gateway that he’ll consider entering judgment in favor of plaintiff Phillip Adams if more critical evidence is [...]

U.S. technology companies praised a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court giving them a powerful new tool to fight off lawsuits brought by so-called patent trolls. The ruling involved the online auction giant eEbay. This ruling will profoundly change the balance of power between companies that use patents primarily for litigation (patent trolls) and high [...]

WestJet apologized to Air Canada and will pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit over a case of corporate espionage. WestJet will pay $5.5 million to cover Air Canada’s investigation and litigation costs, and make a $10-million donation to children’s charities in the names of both airlines. The lawsuit centered around allegations that WestJet management [...]

As a recent news piece in the San-Diego Union Tribune pointed out, after spending some 15 years trying vainly to commercialize various technologies, a small 5-person company in San Diego realized that there is more money in going after the semiconductor industry for violating acquired patent than doing business firsthand themselves. The company has focused [...]

Yahoo lawyers have filed a lawsuit against mobile phone game publisher MFORMA for allegedly poaching its workforce and stealing trade secrets. Seven former Yahoo engineers left the portal company to work for MFORMA, including former manager David Chang, who has been specifically accused of making electronic copies of numerous internal documents prior to his departure. [...]

The deal resolves all patent infringement claims between the two companies that span three federal lawsuits, three international Trade Commission investigations and a state court lawsuit against eMachines, which Gateway acquired in 2004. Under the terms, Gateway will pay $16.7 Million to H-P to resolve the litigation without admitting fault and the remaining $30.3 Million [...]

Software giant Oracle wins case against Usedsoft for reselling its licenses to third parties. A Munich judge ruled that dealing in so-called used software or the resale of software licenses to third parties is illegal. The ruling ends a growing industry designed to broker “used” software. Usedsoft and several other companies have developed businesses to [...]

A Florida couple has temporarily been granted the right to continue operating a business under the name of The Scripps Research Institute. The better-known entity, based in California, was outmaneuvered in its attempt to incorporate in Florida in January 2004. In the fall of 2003, Virginia T. Scott of and David L. Heilmann had already [...]

Mehdi Matt Rashidi, a former employee of BioGenex Laboratories Inc., faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for stealing trade secrets from his former employer and taking them to a competitor. Rashidi worked at BioGenex, a company specializing in automated cell and tissue testing systems, from 1998 [...]