Doogie Howser is alive and well and practicing law in California. Kiwi Camara – I am not making this up – is representing author Elaine Scott in a copyright infringement suit against Scribd.com, a website that allows people to publish their writings online.

Apparently, someone posted a copy of Ms. Scott’s book on the Scribd website without her permission. At her request, Scribd removed her book from their website. Ms. Scott, however, was not satisfied, claiming Scribd had not done enough to prevent the unauthorized posting. She retained Mr. Camara to sue Scribd.

It is not uncommon for the defendant in a patent infringement action to move for a summary judgment of invalidity of the patent-in-suit. It is, however, apparently unique for the plaintiff to do so. In Re Acacia Media Technologies Corp.

Acacia filed more than twenty (20) suits alleging infringement of various claims of five patents, all of which were based on the same specification. The various cases were all transferred to the Federal District Court for The Northern District of California for proceedings under the Multi-District Litigation Rules.

Many laypersons, f/k/a laymen, find lawyers’ writings to be incomprehensible. Now, a federal judge does too.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell has denied a motion filed by attorney David W. Glasser, finding it to be “riddled with unprofessional grammatical and typographical errors that nearly render the entire motion incomprehensible.” The judge marked the errors, in red, on the motion papers and returned them to the attorney with instructions to send a copy to the attorney’s client.

As the reader may (should) remember, an article claim of a patent is infringed if all of the claim limitations are found in the accused product. Note that this statement is silent as to when the claim limitations must be present. A recent case turns on that fascinating – to patent attorneys – issue. Gemtron Corporation v. Saint-Gobain Corporation

A recent, but growing, phenomenon is clients suing their lawyers. The most recent such case is of particular interest and not some little entertainment value. DataTern, Inc. et al. v. Foley & Lardner LLP