Northern District of Texas Blog

On August 6, 2013, Silver Screen Tele-Reality filed two patent infringement cases in the Northern District of Texas (complaints available here and here). Silver Screen claims that Gabriels Technology and SundaySky, Inc. infringe United States Patent No. 8,353,406, entitled System, Method, and Computer Readable Medium for Creating a Video Clip through their use of video technology.

On August 2, 2013, Securus filed its lawsuit (complaint available here) in the Northern District of Texas. Securus claims that Global Tel*Link infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,899,167, entitled “Centralized call processing,” and U.S. Patent No. 7,860,222, entitled “Systems and methods for acquiring, accessing, and analyzing investigative information,” as well as two additional patents. Securus asserts that Global Tel*Link infringes the patents-in-suit “by making, using, selling, or offering to sell in the United States, without authority, products and services, including its inmate telephone system and inmate telephone services, and other inmate correctional facility related services, including, without limitation, telephone call processing, video visitation and investigative services, including, but not limited to, its Inmate Telephone System (ITS), GTL Lazernet Platform, Inmate Calling Manager (ICMv), Call IQ, and/or GTL Data IQ.”

On July 31, 2013, Eight One Two filed a patent infringement lawsuit (complaint available here) against Purdue Pharma. Eight One Two claims Purdue infringes U.S. Patent Nos. 6,697,812, titled “Method and System for Eliminating Error when Packing or Packaging Sets of Serialized Products or Otherwise Identifiable Products” through the “use of an item level tagging and packaging systems that eliminates errors in the packing and shipment of serialized products.”

On July 30, 2013, BWP Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit (complaint available here) against SoftLayer Technologies in the Northern District of Texas. BWP provides entertainment-related photojournalism goods and services, and owns the rights “to a multitude of photographs featuring celebrities.” SoftLayer owns and operates a website known as www.softlawyer.com. BWP claims that SoftLayer copied, modified, and displayed BWP’s photograph’s on SoftLayer’s website, thereby violating the copyright laws.

On July 29, 2013, Provident Precious Metals filed a declaratory judgment lawsuit (complaint available here) against Northwest Territorial Mint in the Northern District of Texas.

Provident “seeks declaratory judgment of non-infringement of alleged copyright(s), trademarks and trade dress rights asserted against Plaintiff by Defendant Northwest. Provident further seeks declaratory judgment that any alleged copyright, trademark or trade dress rights asserted by Northwest are invalid and unenforceable.” “Northwest has asserted that Provident is infringing Northwest’s alleged copyright, trademarks and trade dress rights by selling copper in the shape of the common and well-known .45 caliber ACP ammunition. Provident denies that it has infringed any copyrights owned by Northwest regarding metals with intrinsic value, such as platinum, gold, silver and copper, shaped in the form of ammunition. Provident further denies that is has infringed any trademarks or trade dress rights owned by Northwest relating to replica ammunition-shaped metal products, including, but not limited to, .45 caliber ACP ammunition.”

On July 28, 2013, Scentsible, LLC d/b/a Poo~Pourri filed an application for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Great Innovations, Inc. (pleading available here). Scentsible claims that Great Innovations has violated the Lanham Act and committed unfair competition by “slavish[ly] copying . . . Poo~Pourri’s highly distinctive commercial presentation of its line of toilet deodorizing products in an attempt to sell [Great Innovations’] own products.”

On August 2, 2013, Online News Link filed four patent infringement lawsuits (available here, here, here, and here) against the following defendants: Acxiom Corp., Epsilon Data Management, ExactTarget, GSI Commerce n/k/a Ebay Enterprise, and E-Dialog. Online News Link claims that defendants infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 7,181,758; 7,508,789; and 8,457,545 through “using [their] information distribution system(s) that transmit(s) email communications containing user-selectable links associated with data on a server.”

On August 1, 2013, Sotheby’s filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas against Briggs Freeman (complaint available here). Sotheby’s claims that Briggs Freeman (and certain of its affiliated real estate agents) have committed trademark infringement in violation of its franchise agreement by conducting residential real estate services from locations other than those locations that are approved of in the franchise agreement.