Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office named Xerox Business Services Corporate Counsel Hope Shimabuku to be the first regional director of the agency’s newly-created Dallas office. A former lawyer at BlackBerry, Shimabuku will take office Jan. 4. She will be charged with building an office that will eventually include more than 100 examiners, judges, and outreach and administrative staff.
Businesses and individuals filed a record 851 patent infringement lawsuits in November.
By extending into Dallas, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will better enable Texas attorneys to compete for business with their pricier counterparts in the Washington, D.C. area, experts say.
The annual Eastern District of Texas 2015 Bench Bar Conference started Wednesday at the Plano Marriott Legacy Town Center in Plano and The Texas Lawbook is there and providing complete coverage.
A federal jury in Houston ruled Tuesday that Sterling Engineering Group and its chairman conspired with a former Suncoast Post-Tension manager to obtain and use work product created by Suncoast engineers and protected under the Texas trade secrets law and federal copyright laws. The awarded $11 million in actual damages and another $13.5 million in punitive damages.
Patent holders flooded East Texas federal courts with an unprecedented number of new infringement lawsuits during the first six months of 2015. There were more lawsuits alleging patent violations filed in the EDT during the second quarter of the year than in all the other federal courts across the country combined. This article looks at the numbers and the reasons behind the record filings.
A Marble Falls maker of machine parts for the oil patch lost a closely watched trademark dispute against a rival firm when a federal judge Austin refused to invalidate the defendant’s trademark protections even thought the company’s patent on the product expired years earlier. Legal experts say Judge Spark’s ruling is one of the clearest and most straightforward court decision to state that judges must consider the validity of trademarks and patents separately, even when they involve the same product.
Patent holders asserting their rights in front of U.S. District Judge Gilstrap likely will applaud a new rule that allows cases to move forward with some discovery and claim construction before having patent validity issues addressed by the court. This article provides a complete analysis.
Commil USA v. Cisco Systems is definitely not the run-of-the-mill dry, unemotional patent infringement case. But any litigation that is known as the “Bodacious Bar-B-Q case” must be fascinating. The U.S. Supreme Court officially memorialized the case in the annals of legal history last week. Now the induced infringement case is headed back to East Texas for a third jury trial. More than $100 million will be at stake. This article examines the history of the case and the Supreme Court's decision.
Diane Lettelier, senior managing counsel for the Plano-based retailer, told Senators Thursday that the company is so frequently targeted by unfounded patent lawsuits and threatening demand letters concerning its use of technology that it now shies away from using technology marketed by small tech firms. Adopting new technology makes the company a target for so-called patent trolls, she said.
The number of new patent case filings is on pace to rise in the first quarter of 2015 in the Eastern District of Texas. But an increasingly popular avenue for dealing with patent disputes is siphoning legal work away from the busiest forum in the country for settling squabbles over the ownership of inventions. Welcome to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
A federal jury in Plano found that a California company owes $48.7 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages to Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions [TAOS] for breach of contract, patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.
© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
