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Wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year

Issue: January 2008
 
 

PRESS ROOM

Qualcom loses patent battle with Broadcom

Broadcom filed a suit against Qualcomm in May, 2005 alleging that Qualcomm's sale of chips infringes three of its patents.  The court held Qualcomm liable for infringement and warded damages to the tune of 19.64 million dollars. The court further prohibited Qualcomm from marketing the infringing chips in the future. However, the court allowed Qualcomm to sell the chips till January, 2009, to companies  such as Motorola, LG and so on to which Qualcomm had sold chips before the suit was filed by paying a royalty to Broadcom. During the period, the court fixed a royalty rate of 6 and 4.5 percent on sales for two patents and asked the parties to decide on a royalty rate for the third patent by February, 2009. 

GI protection to Jasmine

Mysore Mallige, Udupi Mallige, and Hadagali Mallige, three types of Jasmine flowers grown in Karnataka, have been granted Geographical Indication (GI) registration in India. The registration was granted based on an application filed by Department of Horticulture. The three flowers are named after the names of the places at which they are grown. The registration allows the community growing the flowers in those areas to prevent usage of the names for Jasmine flowers grown in any other area.

Vonage and Nortel cease-fire with cross licensing

The dispute between Vonage Holdings Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. began in 2004 regarding  phone patents with the filing of a lawsuit by Digital Packet Licensing Inc in  U.S. District Court of Texas for patent infringement against Nortel. In 2005 Nortel filed a lawsuit in Texas to invalidate some of Digital Packet Licensing Inc. patents. In August 2006 Vonage bought Digital Packet Licensing Inc. along with the dispute and filed a lawsuit against Nortel in the state of Delaware for invalidating some of Nortel's patents. In December 2007 Nortel responded by alleging Vonage of patent infringement. The issue has now been finally resolved between the parties by an agreement allowing for cross licensing of the 3 patents each owned by Nortel and Vonage. The deal does not include any royalty payment by any of the parties.
 

Dispute over Lacoste's crocodile trademark

On 8 September 2004, two dentists Dr. Simon J. Moore and Dr. Timothy Rumney from Gloucestershire filed for a trademark. The trademark consistes of a crocodile in green & white above the blue portion of a blue and green underlining bar. The words written are in black & white. The registration was made on the colour of the mark. The mark was opposed by french clothing giants La Chemise Lacoste (SA) who use grinning crocodile as logo. The opposition was dismissed on 24 May 2007. Lacoste filed appeal on 21 June 2007 but appeal was finally dismissed by the judge on 12 December 2007 on the grounds that the earlier mark was not related to medical (or dentistry) services. Lacoste has been ordered to pay £1450 as a contribution towards their costs of the opposition and appeal to the dentists.  
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