Posts Tagged: "Brian Howard"

Copyright litigation in 2016 saw rise in textile plaintiffs, decline in file sharing cases

The most active defendants in copyright lawsuits include department store chain Ross Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST), which was named as a defendant in 276 cases. Following Ross Stores are a series of retailers: TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX), named a defendant in 123 cases; Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a defendant in 84 cases; Burlington Coat Factory (NYSE:BURL), a defendant in 74 cases; and Rainbow USA Inc., a defendant in 66 cases. Except for Amazon, these are primarily off-price department stores offering brand name goods at discounted prices. Music publishers like Universal Music Group, Inc. (65 suits) and education publishers like Pearson Education, Inc. (NYSE:PSO) (50 suits) are also among the top defendants in copyright cases.

Lex Machina trademark litigation report shows heavy enforcement activity for luxury fashion and bong brands

When looking at damages awarded in trademark infringement cases filed since 2005 and terminating between 2009 and 2016, fashion brands have taken in the highest award totals. The top spot here belongs to Parisian fashion brand Chanel, which has been awarded nearly $1 billion dollars from 160 infringement cases resulting in awards out of the 330 cases filed by Chanel. That’s almost double the $523 million awarded to Burberry Limited but its sibling Burberry Limited UK was awarded $416.6 million and those totals were awarded over the course of a combined 12 infringement cases. In terms of damage totals, there’s another steep drop to Gucci of Florence, Italy, which was awarded $207.7 million over the course of 26 cases.

How Artificial Intelligence Helps Lawyers Compete in today’s Data-driven World

The law waits for no one and neither does AI, which has already made a lasting impact in many areas of business, including the practice of law. Contracts, e-discovery and overall legal research have all changed thanks to AI, but as computers driven by ever-increasing processing power exhibit extraordinarily intelligent behavior we can only assume such advances are far from over. Whether within the enterprise, partners, customers, opposing litigants or elsewhere, legal assets cannot hide from the likes of Watson—or for that matter HAL—or other budding or to-be-conceived AI platforms… Despite paranoia and hyperbole surrounding AI since 2001: A Space Odyssey, intelligent computers will not take over the world, although that premise does make for exciting science fiction. While the rise of the machines is not something one should fear, AI systems and their architects have made significant strides in realizing learning machines that can adapt to dense, arcane legal terminology.

Law Firm Trends: AmLaw firms handling smaller percentage of cases filed in 2014

Some time ago, a colleague posed an interesting question to me in hopes that Lex Machina’s data might be able to shed some light: Has the kind or size of firms handling patent cases changed much over the last few years? In other words, are companies increasingly choosing smaller, cheaper boutiques, or are they relying more often on “BigLaw” firms?

2013 Patent Litigation Year in Review

Trials were held in 128 patent cases in 2013, including 52 bench trials and 63 jury trials. Thirteen cases involved both bench and jury trials. Over half of all trials were held in the District of Delaware (25), the Eastern District of Texas (25) or the Southern District of New York (17). Cases went to trial fastest in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; its 255-day median time to trial was approximately 12 times faster than the 2,423 days it took a case to get to trial in the Western District of New York, the slowest district.