RPX Asset Buy, Guess, Omega, Star Wars: Intellectual Property
(This is a daily report on global news about patents, trademarks, copyright and other intellectual property topics. To be sent this column daily, click SALT IPREPORT
(Bloomberg) — RPX Corp., a San Francisco patent risk- management company, gave details in a regulatory filing of its purchase of a portfolio of 4,000 patent assets from Rockstar Consortium LLC, a group of companies set up to buy intellectual property from defunct Canadian phonemaker Nortel Networks Corp.
The assets were part of a group of more than 6,000 patents that Plano, Texas-based Rockstar acquired from Nortel in 2011. Rockstar was set up by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Ericsson AB and Sony Corp.
Rockstar was paid $900 million in cash, with $35 million coming directly from RPX itself and the remainder from a group of more than 30 companies, according to the filing. In return for their contribution, members of the buyer group will receive non-exclusive licenses to the patents.
RPX will make the patents available to other interested companies under what it called fair, reasonable and non- discriminatory terms. Additionally, eight infringement cases against 16 companies — including Google Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. — are to be dismissed, RPX said.
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Trademark
Guess Prevails in Dispute With Gucci in Paris Court
Guess Inc., the Los Angeles fashion house, won a French trademark battle with luxury goods-maker Gucci, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported.
Gucci, a unit of Paris-based Kering SA, had accused Guess of infringing its trademarks and competing unfairly, according to the newspaper.
Instead of awarding Gucci requested damages of 55 million euros ($63 million), the Court of Paris ordered the company to pay Guess 30,000 Euros and invalidated a Gucci trademark, the business journal reported.
Gucci made similar infringement claims against Guess in the U.S. and Italy, according to the publication.
Omega Appeals New Zealand Ruling on Jeans Pocket Design
Omega SA, the Swiss maker of high-end watches, is appealing an adverse trademark decision in New Zealand, Business Day reported.
True Religion Apparel Inc.’s Guru Denim unit uses an upside-down Greek letter Omega as a pocket-stitching design on its jeans, and Omega had claimed the public was likely to see the jeans and think they came from the watchmaker, according to the New Zealand newspaper.
Omega’s counsel said that while the two companies operated in different spheres of the economy, if the watchmaker’s products are turned sideways or upside-down, its logo might be confused with the Guru Denim symbol, Business Day reported.
After New Zealand’s trademark officials found no infringement, Omega filed an appeal with the High Court in Wellington, Business Day reported.
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Copyright
Disney Uses Subpoena to Search for ‘Star Wars’ Image Uploader
A San Francisco federal court issued a subpoena requested by Walt Disney Co., which is seeking information about the identity of someone who posted images from the next “Star Wars” movie.
According to court filings, Disney’s Lucasfilm unit wants to know who posted the still photos on ImageShack’s image- hosting website. The as-yet-unreleased film is the first in the Star Wars series to be made since Disney’s 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm. The film studio said the photos were uploaded without permission.
The request for the subpoena contained a link to an ImageShack page where multiple images identified as screen shots from Oct. 26, 2014, can be seen. According to a counter on the page, by Tuesday it had been viewed more than 27,000 times. The subpoena identified the images as costume design and photographs from “Star Wars Episode VII.”
According to the subpoena, ImageShack must produce all identifying information for a user named “Darth Simi,” including name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Internet protocol addresses.
The case is Lucas Film LLC v. ImageShack Corp., 3:15- mc-80051, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
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–With assistance from Phil Milford in Wilmington, Delaware.
To contact the reporter on this story: Victoria Slind-Flor in San Francisco at vslindflor@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Charles Carter, Andrew Dunn
