Letter from AmeriKat II: Bits and Bobs

• $1.26 Billion Reprieve for PepsiCo - On Friday a Wisconsin judge vacated the $1.26 billion judgment in default against PepsiCo (see last week’s AmeriKat letter here). PepsiCo stated that they were now looking forward to defending the case.

• “There’s a suit for that” - AT&T has filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Georgia against Verizon for false advertising under the Lanham Act. According to this New York Times article the subject of the complaint is Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” commercials which parody AT&T’s iPhone ads that state “There’s an app for that”.

• First Amendment, Patents, and Genes - A controversial federal court decision in the Southern District of New York case of Association for Molecular Pathology et al. v USPTO et al has ruled that patients and individuals may challenge patents on human genes in court by allowing a lawsuit that challenges patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer to proceed. Commentators are arguing that citing the First Amendment, as the plaintiffs did in this case, cannot and should not be a legally sound rationale to challenge patent validity. The AmeriKat suggests you read these articles here for further information: Patent Baristas, Wired, Examiner, Am Law Litigation Daily and Patently-O.

• E-Bay and Skype - The dispute between E-Bay and Skype (reported by the AmeriKat here) has settled with Skype’s founders reportedly getting a 14% stake and board representation in return for dropping their legal action. For further information see this report in the Financial Times.

• Pixar Lamps – According to the Hollywood Reporter’s legal blog, Disney has amicably settled the trade mark infringement lawsuit brought by lamp manufacturers, Luxo, for Pixar’s use and commercialization of identical Luxo lamps. For a report on the original dispute, please see the AmeriKat’s article here.

* Google Book Settlement - As previously reported by the AmeriKat (here and here, to name a few)the deadline for the submission of the new and improved settlement is today. For more information please see the San Fransisco Chronicle article here.

* Bilski Begins - the Supreme Court has begun oral submissions in the soon to be landmark case of Bilski (see brief IPFinance article here). For further information please see an article in Bloomberg here.