Patent Law Bits and Bytes: Holiday Cheer

• Attorney Marketing professional Robert Denney publishes an annual year-end report entitled "What's Hot and What's Not in the Legal Profession." First on his list for What's Hot: Intellectual Property. Not only litigation. Patent prosecution is heating up again. [LINK]
• One of the more interesting aspects of the recent i4i decision involved the Federal Circuit's interpretation of the first eBay factor: that the patentee "has suffered an irreparable injury." The court held that evidence of past irreparable harm is sufficient to satisfy the requirement of the first factor since the term "has suffered" indicates a past event. [Link] This is only odd because a primary purpose of equitable relief is to prevent future harm.
• Judge Rader will be riding circuit next year. He is scheduled to preside over the patent infringement trials for three Eastern District of Texas Cases. (Based on pacer documents and a preliminary report by Michael Smith.)
• Widevine v. Merimatrix, Case No. 07–cv-0321; Patent No. 7,165,175.
• Performance Pricing v. Google, Case No. 07–cv-0432; Patent No. 6,978,253.
• IP Innovation v. Red Hat & Novell, Case No. 07–cv-0447; Patent Nos. 5,072,412 and 5,394,521.