(UPDATED December 30, 2011)

We thought it was interesting when we read that PIEtech, Inc., a company in Powhatan, Virginia, actually asked to be a defendant in a patent infringement lawsuit that involved one of its clients.

In August, PIEtech's competitor (and neighbor in Richmond, Virginia) Wealthcare Capital Management, sued the large Wall Street firm UBS Financial for infringement of patents for a “Method and System for Financial Advising”. Both patents were issued last summer.

When a lawsuit has reached the point of name-calling and conspiracy accusations, it takes on the aspect of a sitcom. (Mattel, Inc. et al. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc.)

MGA is – at least for the present time – the owner of the line of BRATZ dolls. Mattel contends that the dolls were created by an MGA employee, Mr. Carter Bryant, at a time when he was still under contract to Mattel. Seeking to enforce its claim to ownership of BRATZ, Mattel sued MGA. The legal battle has now stretched on for seven (7) years.

Wouldn’t it be great, from a patentee’s perspective, if infringement could be proven without the bother and expense of comparing the asserted patent claims with an accused product? Well, good news patentees; now in some circumstances you can! (Fujitsu Limited, LG Electronics, Inc. and U.S. Philips Corporation v. Netgear Inc.)

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.

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