Viewing posts from November, 2017
Thanks to the efforts of our newest member, Simon Hobbs, we have a new web site with a new look and lots of new content, with more to come. We hope you enjoy it!
In this one I was engaged as a testifying expert for the plaintiff in an action for patent infringement in optical time-domain reflectometers (OTDRs) used for testing fibre-optic networks. As so often happens, the defendant petitioned the Patent Office for an inter partes review of the patents-in-suit, which I also assisted with. The most unusual feature of this one was the really ferocious protective order covering the defendants' source code--it had to be printed on blue paper, one hard copy only, no soft copy, and kept locked in a steel cabinet at all times when not actively in use.
In the spring of 2017, I was approached by lawyers from two technology companies working in civil avionics (instruments for airplanes). I can't say who they were due to NDA restrictions, but the job was an unusual and interesting one. The two companies had been joint development partners, but the relationship had soured and trust had now broken down completely. Both were concerned that the other was misusing intellectual property disclosed during the joint venture, and they asked me to do do an audit to see whether this was in fact true. The situation was made more complicated because one company was several hundred times as large as the other, and of course there was no court-ordered discovery and no one was under oath.