P&G Suit, Apple, U.K. Museums, GE: Intellectual Property 

Legal letter

Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) has settled a patent-infringement case with makers and distributors of tooth-whitening strips, according to an Oct. 31 filing in federal court in Cincinnati.

In the filing, the parties agreed that tooth-whitening strips made by Clio USA Inc., and distributed by Team Technologies Inc. and Brushpoint Innovations Inc., infringed patents 5,891,453, 5,894,017 and 7,122,199 belonging to P&G.

The three defendants agreed to quit making infringing products and halt shipping them by Nov. 7.

Parties are to bear their own costs and fees, and no other terms of the settlement of the July 2012 suit were disclosed.

The case is Procter & Gamble Co. v. Team Technologies Inc., 12-cv-00552, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio (Cincinnati).

Trademark

Apple ‘iPhone’ Registration Challenged in India by ‘iFon’ Owner

An Indian company asked trademark regulators to deregister Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s “iPhone” trademark in India, Apple Insider reported.

The “iFon” trademark belonging to iVoice Enterprises of Erode, India, was deregistered in 2008, following objections from Cupertino, California-based Apple, according to Apple Insider.

The Indian company, which was established in 2007 to make a low-priced mobile phone for the Indian market, then filed the challenge with that country’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board, Apple Insider reported.

The board has asked Apple to respond to iVoice’s request, according to Apple Insider.

Copyrights

U.K. Museums, Libraries Say Copyright Law Bars WWI Displays

A coalition of U.K. libraries, museums and cultural institutions said copyright law in the country is barring them from making significant artifacts from World War I available to the public.

In a statement, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals said display cases at some of the nation’s leading cultural institutions are empty during the centennial of the war.

Some of the items that aren’t being displayed to the public are diaries and letters from soldiers to their families back home. They can’t be displayed without permission from the rights’ holders, even if the holders can’t be traced, according to the statement.

The U.K.’s Imperial War Museum houses about 1.75 million “orphan works,” documents with untraceable rights’ owners. This constitutes as much as 25 percent of its collection, the organization said.

The cultural organizations are asking the U.K. government to cut the term of copyright protection for some unpublished works from the end of 2039 to the lifetime of the author, plus 70 years.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

GE Unit Victim of Chinese Engineer’s Trade-Secret Theft

A Chinese engineer pleaded guilty to trade-secret theft from a General Electric Co. (GE) unit.

According to a plea agreement filed Oct. 29 in Milwaukee, Jun Xie, an engineer who worked on magnetic resonance technology for the GE Medical Systems unit, acknowledged copying more than 2.4 million electronic files from his employer without authorization and sending them on storage devices to relatives in China.

The documents included business strategy information related to “silent” magnetic resonance technology, according to the agreement. The parties have agreed that the estimated loss, based on the cost of developing the stolen trade secrets, was $100 million to $200 million.

Xie agreed to pay $130,000 restitution to Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE. A sentencing date hasn’t been set.

The case is U.S. v. Xie, 2:14-cr-00205, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin (Milwaukee).

 

Source: bloomberg-P&G Suit, Apple, U.K. Museums, GE: Intellectual Property

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