California Court Confirms Invalidity of California Tax Rules, Awards ACMA over $330,000 in Attorney Fees

On February 13, 2024, in a lawsuit brought by Brann & Isaacson on behalf of the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) against the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB), San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan P. Schulman issued orders on post-judgment motions affirming the ACMA’s victory and awarding the association attorney fees of $332,895.50 and costs...

Brann & Isaacson Wins Dismissal of Retaliation Lawsuit Against Schoolteacher

Justice Billings of the Sagadahoc Superior Court has ordered the dismissal of a third complaint filed by Matthew Pollock and Jane Quirion against staff members from Regional School Unit No. 75. The teacher in this case, who is represented by partners Daniel Nuzzi and Nathaniel Bessey, was accused of retaliation against the plaintiffs to, among...

Supreme Court Offers Guidance On Standard For Obtaining Fees In Copyright Cases

For the second time this week, the Supreme Court unanimously clarified the legal standard for obtaining certain relief in intellectual property cases. In today’s opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Justice Kagan, writing for the Court, explained the analysis trial courts should engage in to determine whether and when to award attorneys’ fees...

Accused Infringer Succeeds In Justifying Fee Award, Then Fails To Prove Fees

In the latest twist in the saga of the Webvention patent litigation, Novartis has been denied its attorneys’ fees after having demonstrated that it was entitled to them. You can read the back–story here. (As noted there, our firm was involved in this case once upon a time, but not lately.) The sequel brings a...

(In)voluntary Dismissal: Virginia Court Invalidates Patent; Florida Court Leaves Door Open To Fee Award

It should go without saying that a defendant cannot infringe a patent claim that has been ruled invalid. In a recent ruling from the Middle District of Florida, that court addressed one of the consequences of this truism: what happens when one court invalidates a patent that has been asserted in a different court. In...

East Texas Judge Orders eDekka To Pay Accused Infringers’ Fees

In a closely watched case from east Texas, Judge Gilstrap has awarded attorneys’ fees to defendants who successfully moved to dismiss the claims against them because the asserted patent was drawn to patent–ineligible subject matter. As we reported in September, Judge Gilstrap granted a set of motions to dismiss under Alice v. CLS Bank, then...

Alice Bounces eDekka Patent In East Texas

The judges of the Eastern District of Texas have not been the most welcoming in the country to the early application of Alice v. CLS Bank—the Supreme Court opinion that lays out the two–step test for determining whether a patent should be voided because it claims abstract ideas, not inventions—in patent litigation. But the winds...

Niro and Spangenberg Leaving the Patent Troll Field?

Joe Mullin at Ars Technica writes that two figures prominently associated with the patent troll phenemonen—Ray Niro and Erich Spangenberg—are eyeing the exits of the litigation field they helped create. Facing a potential fee award of several million dollars to HTC in one case, Niro recently declared the stand–alone patent case “dead on arrival,” citing...

Court Sanctions Niro Patent Law Firm Millions In Fees

The new year has not gotten off to a good start for well–known patent law firm Niro, Haller & Niro of Chicago. As reported by Law.com, the Niro firm is on the hook for millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees in a lawsuit it filed on behalf of Intellect Wireless against HTC. U.S. District Judge...

ITC Becomes House of Horrors For Respondent and Counsel

Here’s a post–Halloween tale to chill the blood of any business accused of patent infringement and their outside litigation counsel, courtesy of Docket Navigator. On October 29, 2014, Administrative Law Judge Pender of the International Trade Commission issued a decision in which he found that the respondent, Organik Kimya of Turkey, had engaged in the...