C.R. Bard Inc., a major manufacturer of products related to vascular, urology and oncology disease, has filed a lawsuit against two of its competitors for allegedly infringing on Bard’s patent for a “Prosthetic Vascular Graft” using a specialized plastic called expanded polytetrafluoroethylene.

The two defendants in the case are Endologix and Atrium Medical Corp. Endologix develops and manufactures products to allow for minimally invasive treatment of vascular disease. Atrium Medical Corp. manufactures a diversified array of medical products. 

Scapegaming was recently ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment $88.6 million for violating intellectual property rights for allowing players to access a set of World of Warcraft emulator servers.

An emulator server (also known as a private server) refers to an Internet server that mimics the behavior of another server. In this case, Scapegaming’s emulator servers allowed people to connect to and play World of Wizard without using official Blizzard servers.

Microsoft’s Second Chinese Piracy Lawsuit in a Year

Microsoft settled a lawsuit against a large Chinese company for using unlicensed software in its operations.  In the settlement, CITIC Kington Securities of Hangzhou, China will buy $477,000 of Microsoft software. The suit was filed in a court in the city of Hangzhou.

This is the second Chinese piracy suit the software giant has won this year. In April, a court in Shanghai ruled against a Chinese insurance company, Dazhong Insurance Co., Ltd., for software piracy. Last year, four people were sentenced to prison for distributing pirated Microsoft products. 

Won similar lawsuits in Germany, China and Korea

When intellectual property law becomes international, it can produce seemingly contradictory results.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio dismissed a suit filed five years ago by St. Louis-based Solutia Inc. against Sinorgchem of China and Kumho Petrochemical of South Korea. The suit alleged that the companies copied Solutia’s patented eco-friendly process for preventing rubber from degrading, a process used mainly used for tires.

The case was put on hold while Solutia Inc. pursued the claim before the International Trade Commission, which also ruled in favor of Solutia’s Chinese and Korean competitors.

However, Solutia won similar lawsuits earlier this year in Germany, China and South Korea. It is now exploring options for appeal.

The ruling is particularly important to Solutia, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy two years ago, and currently gets most of its profit from the division that produces the contended rubber protection product.

Judge Declares Copyright Owner Must Monitor Its Own Products

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled in favor of Google in its long-standing dispute with Viacom International Inc. Viacom International alleged that Google was liable for copyright infringement for publishing copyright-protected content on its YouTube site. The Court declared that Google was protected by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which basically states that online services can’t be held liable for content independently uploaded by site visitors, with some exceptions.

The Court says the burden was on Viacom (as copyright owner) to identify infringement and notify the site owners of the problem. This is true even if the online service provider had general knowledge of the potential infringement. However, the Court also lauded YouTube for quickly removing the potentially infringing video when it was notified of the problem.

While victorious, the struggle was not without cost. Google estimates that it has spent about $100 million to defend itself in the lawsuit. And its expenses are not over yet. Viacom pledges to appeal the decision.