Patent Law Practice Center

Sony sues Fujifilm on 3M-acquired patents

Sony Corporation recently filed a patent infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against Japanese photography and imaging company Fujifilm. At the center of Sony’s legal action are magnetic tape products marketed by Fujifilm which allegedly practice technology copied from Sony without a license.

In the official complaint filed by Sony, the company asserts a series of four patents, which it alleges Fujifilm infringed through the sale of the company’s Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format magnetic tapes, specifically generation four, five and six LTO tapes (LTO-4, LTO-5, LTO-6).

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Hewlett-Packard Reexamination Request Of Princeton Digital Patent Among Requests Filed Week of 8/8/11

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott Daniels, of Reexamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor…

Hewlett-Packard has sought reexamination of Princeton Digital’s U.S. Patent No. 4,813,056 for digital signals used in cameras, camcorders, copiers, scanners and various multifunction devices (see ex parte Request No. (7)).  The ‘056 patent, originally owned by General Electric, is the subject of two infringement actions by Princeton in the Eastern District of Texas, against a slew of consumer electronics companies including HP, Ricoh, Kodak, andFujifilm.  Canon is reported this morning to have settled its case.

Garmin has requested reexamination of its own patent for a sports computer with GPS (see ex parte Request No. 6).  Presumably,Garmin is attempting to beat Bryton, whom Garmin has sued for infringement of that patent, to the punch.

Finally, there were reports over the weekend that Google had requested reexamination against two Lodsys patents – U.S. Patent Nos. 7,222,078 & 7,620,565 – that Lodsys has asserted against a large group of small makers of applications for Android®.  Google’s Requests, however, are not yet available. (more…)