News/Events - Newsletter
NEWS FROM OSTROLENK, FABER, GERB & SOFFEN, LLP
August, 2006
To the mutual satisfaction of all parties, Ostrolenk helped a garment manufacturer located in New York City settle a significant trademark litigation with a corporation located in Europe. Led by Robert Faber with co-counsels Douglas Miro and Peter Sloane, the case required expedited discovery and extensive motion practice. Art Cody, Douglas Hahn, David Torrente, and Kelly Bargmann assisted on the case.
Partners Charles LaPolla and Doug Miro are representing Six Flags Theme Parks Inc in a patent infringement suit brought by Palmtop Productions, Inc. The suit is pending before the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Georgia. The suit alleges that that technology utilized in an electronic line reservation system used at some Six Flags parks infringes upon a patent asserted by Palmtop. Six Flags has asserted invalidity of the patent as well as non-infringement.
Partners Charles LaPolla and Doug Miro and associate Art Cody are representing Nutrexpa S.A. in a trade dress infringement suit brought by Ferrero SpA pending before the U.S. District Court in Trenton, New Jersey. Specifically, Ferrero has alleged that the packaging utilized by Nutrexpa for its mint products infringes upon alleged trade dress in Ferrero's Tic Tac mint products. Nutrexpa has asserted invalidity of Ferro's asserted trade dress based on functionality as well as lack of infringement.
Super Lawyer
Partner Douglas A. Miro has been named to this year’s list of New York "Super Lawyers" for IP. Super Lawyers names the top attorneys in Manhattan as chosen by their peers and through the independent research of Law & Politics. 2006 New York Super Lawyers is based on surveys of more than 59,000 lawyers in Manhattan. The goal was to select as Super Lawyers the top 5 percent of New York attorneys in more than 60 practice areas. New York Super Lawyers is published annually in a special advertising supplement in The New York Times which reaches 684,000 Manhattan readers. New York Super Lawyers — Manhattan Edition has been mailed to more than 76,000 Manhattan lawyers.
Leading the Legal Profession
On June 28, 2006 our trademark counsel, Marty Beran, gave a lecture at the headquarters of the International Trademark Association providing examples of trademark infringement and unfair competition over the years with exhibits and anecdotes that accompanied them. The International Trademark Association is considering working with Mr. Beran to create a series of presentations that can be delivered to various audiences who are interested in learning more about trademark law and the complications surrounding this area of intellectual property.
Firm Expansion—Three Attorneys Join
Attorneys George Brieger, David J. Torrente and Bella I. Karakis have joined our firm.
George Brieger
George Brieger’s practice includes patent prosecution in the electrical-mechanical and e-commerce technological areas, including telecommunications, data networks, semiconductor fabrication and testing, medical device design, image processing and business methods, as well as patent and intellectual property licensing, client counseling and litigation. Prior to joining our firm, Mr. Brieger was a patent attorney at a major intellectual property law firm in Washington, D.C., and has prosecuted and written hundreds of patent applications. He has been listed for several years (1998-present) in Marquis’ Who is Who in American Law. Mr. Brieger has taught American legal reasoning and case law analysis at ELTE University Law School in Budapest, Hungary. He speaks Hungarian and Hebrew. Mr. Brieger is registered as a patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and is admitted to the New York and Washington, D.C. bars.
Mr. Brieger graduated with honors from Brooklyn College in 1988 with a B.S. in computer science; his primary computer languages were PL/1, Pascal, and JAVA. Mr. Brieger is a 1993 graduate of the Cardozo School of Law, where he was selected articles editor of the New Europe Law Review, a scholarly periodical focusing on transnational European issues. Mr. Brieger holds an LL.M. (Master of Laws) in patent and intellectual property from the George Washington University Law School, where his thesis concerned patent misuse doctrine for terms in patent license agreements and related patent claim strategies.
David J. Torrente
Mr. Torrente’s practice includes all aspects of intellectual property. Mr. Torrente graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with Aerospace Concentration in 1997. He was an Applications Engineer with Vickers-Warnick, Inc., Rochester, N.Y., from 1997-1999, where he gained valuable industry experience in the field of industrial automation, including PLC’s and sensors, electric and pneumatic motion control, and machine vision. Mr. Torrente then served as a Patent Examiner with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 1999-2001, examining patents relating to power plants, particularly gas turbines and jet propulsion, pumps, expansible chamber motors and fluid diffusing nozzles.
Registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in patent cases since 2001, Mr. Torrente entered private practice that year as a Patent Agent with the firm of Scully, Scott, Murphy and Presser, PC, Garden City, N.Y. There his experience expanded to include medical devices, image processing, cellular communications, and autonomous computer-based aircraft command and control, among other diverse mechanical and electro-mechanical technologies. Mr. Torrente also assisted clients involved in patent litigation at the trial and appellate levels. He received his J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law in 2005, and is admitted to practice in New York.
Bella I. Karakis
Bella I. Karakis is an intellectual property attorney specializing in domestic and international trademark and copyright prosecution, enforcement, contested matters. Before coming to Ostrolenk, Faber, Bella was an Associate at Fross, Zelnick, Lehrman & Zissu, P.C. Prior to that, Bella was in-house counsel at World Wrestling Entertainment, inc., where she was Vice President of Intellectual Property.
Bella is a 1994 graduate of Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. She was Research Editor of the Touro Law Review 1993/1994 and Associate Editor 1992/1993. Bella received her Bachelor's Degree in English in 1986 from the University of Pennsylvania. Bella is the author of Law Review article, Moral Rights: French, United States and Soviet Compliance with Article 6bis of the Berne Convention, 5 Touro Int’l. L. Rev. 105 (1994). Bella is fluent in Russian. Bella is admitted to the New York and New Jersey bars, and is admitted before the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. She is a member of the Intellectual Property Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.
