News/Events - Newsletter

NEWS FROM OSTROLENK, FABER, GERB & SOFFEN, LLP
December 2004

Partner Douglas A. Miro, with the assistance of associates Mark Farley and Douglas Hahn, recently defeated a motion for a preliminary injunction in a patent case brought by one of our clients competitors. The patentee sought to enjoin our client from conducting tests and making sales to its customers. In denying the motion, the court adopted our defenses to rule that our clients activities were non-infringing, and that if the patent-in-suit were interpreted as broadly as the patentee argued, the patent would be invalid.

Partner Jim Finder's article, "Festo: The (Nearly) Final Chapter" was published by Thomson/West in the June 2004 issue of the Andrews Litigation Reporter. From 2000 to 2003, there were nine decisions issued in the Festo case, by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. The Festo decisions came as a shock to patent owners and attorneys alike, creating three years of confusion in the law of how patent claims are to be interpreted, e.g., under the patent law Doctrine of Equivalents, and applied to infringers. Mr. Finders article summarizes the new state of the law after Festo, and presents recommendations for patent drafting and prosecution in the future in the wake of this important case. If you would like a reprint of the article, please contact Mr. Finder at jfinder@ostrolenk.com.

Associate Peter S. Sloane's article titled "Is the Internet Changing Copyright Law or is Copyright Law Changing the Internet?: The Nexus Between Copyright and Internet Law Cases in 2004" is scheduled to appear in the December edition of the Computer and Online Litigation Reporter. In the article, he discusses cases from the past year dealing with the intersection between copyright and Internet law, and he analyzes their impact upon a prospective plaintiff. If you would like a reprint of the article, please contact Mr. Sloane at psloane@ostrolenk.com.