News/Events/Blogs

The U.S. Supreme Court’s May 22, 2017 ruling in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods held that personal jurisdiction alone does not convey venue for patent cases under the patent venue statute. Previously, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States district courts had interpreted the patent venue statute, 28 U.S.C. §1400(b), to allow plaintiffs to bring a patent infringement case against a domestic corporation in any district court where there is personal jurisdiction over that corporate defendant.

Employers sometimes see a position elimination or reduction in force as a way of terminating employees that is kinder and gentler than termination for cause. Position eliminations and reductions in force allow an employer to say goodbye to an employee without having to lay out the reasons for the separation on the employee’s door step. It is, after all, easier to say the “business won’t support your continued employment,” than it is to say, “we don’t like your work.” While some people may embrace confrontation,

Mandatory AB 1825 Sexual Harassment Prevention Training
 

The regulations regarding California’s Mandatory Sexual Harassment Prevention Training for supervisors require that certain employers provide training to their supervisors every two years.

The Labor and Employment Group at Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin is offering a two hour in-person training session that will comply with all the requirements outlined in the regulations including things like:

• An overview of sexual harassment laws
• Examples of conduct that constitute sexual harassment
• Strategies to prevent harassment in the workplace
• Lawful supervisory responses to complaints of harassment in the workplace
• Training on prevention of “abusive conduct”

The following discussion concerns the California Fair Pay Act, and how to apply it. If you are unfamiliar with the Act, you may wish to begin by reading this blog.

I get calls from employers asking: “When I group my employees by substantial similarity of work, how do I know that I am doing it correctly?” These employers fear that someone – a Court, a plaintiff, or an employee – will come along and challenge the employer’s determination of who among its employees are engaged in “substantially similar” work.

There is some confusion about what constitutes an “on-sale bar” in patent law. The on-sale bar, set forth in 35 U.S.C §102, prohibits a patent if the invention sought to be patented was offered for sale or sold more than one year before the patent application was filed. In other words, there is a one-year grace period after an offer for sale or sale in which a patent application may be filed. The earliest date of an offer of sale or sale is the critical date,

Litigation Attorney Josh Escovedo was featured in an article in the Sacramento Business Journal in which he weighed in on The Mimosa House’s suit against Eliud Moreno and EO United LLC, the owner and operator of Friends with Benedicts. Josh represents Moreno saying, “We believe this is anti-competitive litigation being pursued by The Mimosa House to minimize their competition in the area,”.

To read the full article, please visit the Sacramento Business Journal here: https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2018/03/06/the-mimosa-house-files-trademark-suit-against.html

Josh is an associate at Weintraub Tobin,

In Exmark Manufacturing Company v. Briggs & Stratton Power Products, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 783 (Fed. Cir. 2018), the Federal Court of Appeals addressed patent infringement damages based on a reasonable royalty. Exmark Manufacturing Company owned a patent for a lawn mower with an improved flow control baffle (the part that controls the flow of air and cut grass underneath the mower). Exmark sued Briggs & Stratton Power Products for patent infringement. The jury returned a verdict of infringement against Briggs and found the infringement willful.

As we struggle to come to grips with the recent tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, many have bemoaned the lack of response by law enforcement prior to the attack. News outlets state that the shooter was reported to the FBI twice in the months prior to the attack, and that his mother, teachers, and fellow students had discussed or reported unnerving incidents in the months leading up to the shooting. The failures of law enforcement remain to be investigated,

Weintraub Tobin Shareholder, Beth West, shared her expertise and testified before the California Legislature’s Subcommittee on Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response on February 15, 2018. The hearing focused on the legal issues surrounding sexual harassment and Ms. West’s testimony identified challenges employers face in having effective anti-harassment programs in place, as well as some legal challenges employers face when complaints are filed.

Ms. West has over 18 years of experience representing employers in all aspects of their employment relationship with their employees.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit just highlighted another approach plaintiffs can use to overcome early challenges to the validity of patent claims under 35 U.S.C. §101.   What is that approach?  It is a classic one:  show there is a genuine issue of fact.  That approach saved a subset of claims from summary judgment in Berkheimer v. HP.

Berkheimer sued HP for infringement of its patent “relat[ing] to digitally processing and archiving files in a digital asset management system.”  The system parses files into objects and “tags objects to create relationships between them.”  “The objects are analyzed and compared … to archived objects” to find variations.