Earlier this week, Nintendo emerged victorious in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals as part of a patent infringement dispute involving Wii and GameCube controllers. On April 2, IA Labs filed a suit against Nintendo in the United States District Court of Maryland claiming that Nintendo has willfully infringed upon IA Labs patents with Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and the Wii Balance Board, as well as the Wii Remote, Wii Nunchuk, Wii Motion Plus, Wii Wheel and Wii Zapper. Although Nintendo won that law suit against Wii, Wii is filing another patent infringement law suit, this time associated with its tent-pole release in the highly lucrative fitness genre. The fitness technology company claims that the patents have been used in a number of products in the past.  The new products that are part of this suit are Kilowatt Sport and Exer-Station, both of which picked up innovation of the year award at the Consumer Electronics Show, in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Bid for Position owns rights to a U.S. patent tiled “Online Auction Bid Management System and Method.” Bid for Position has lost an appeal to a ruling that its bidding system patent was not infringed by Google’s and AOL’s search advertising purchasing system. The company claimed that search advertising systems from AOL, Google, and Microsoft infringed on its patent because they used auction bids to determine pricing for ads on search results. However, the court determined that there were important functional differences between the bidding system described in the patent and Google’s AdWords.  U.S. District Judge Jerome Friedman ruled in October 2008 in favor of Google and AOL in a summary judgment that neither company’s system caused patent infringement.

Canadian firm WiLAN claims widespread patent infringement for its patented Bluetooth technology.  WiLAN has filed a law suit in the U.S. District Court in Texas yesterday accusing several major companies, including Apple, Dell, HP, Intel, Motorola, Sony Corporation and Toshiba of infringing of its patented Bluetooth technology.  WiLAN is claiming that the vendors have violated the patented technology that stops Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals interfering with each other on mobile phones and laptops.  Legal disputes over patent and trademark infringements have become widespread in the technology industry in recent times, as players big and small tussle over key technologies.  Apple and Nokia are currently in a law suit over alleged patent infringements, while Kodak has filed a complaint against Apple and RIM over alleged patent infringement in digital cameras embedded in phones.

A federal appeals court denied Microsoft’s request that a full panel of judges rehear arguments in its long running patent dispute with a small Canadian technology company.  The decision is a blow to the word’s largest software maker, which has been involved in a dispute with Toronto-based i4i over a feature in Microsoft’s “Word” application for than three years. A federal jury awarded i4i $290 million last August after finding patent infringements belonging to i4i relating to text manipulation software in the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft’s Word processing application.  At the same time the court granted i4i’s motion for an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling versions of Word containing the disputed technology.  Microsoft appealed the jury award, but in December a panel of three appeals court judges rejected its argument. In January Microsoft asked for rehearing by all 11 judges of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit, which handles many patent and trademark cases.   This request was rejected last week.

On April 1, Microsoft shares were down 1.3 percent to $28.91 on the Nasdaq.

If you have been reading our blog you have noticed that the majority of our articles are about big technology companies being sued or suing other technology companies for various patent or trademark infringements. What’s interesting is that U.S. patent law has not changed much in 55 years. By introducing products like Smartphones, touch-screen phones, iPads and iPods, one might think that our current patent law should be different from the days of FDR’s presidency.  A recent law suit by Frisco (Texas-based Smartphone company), suing Apple, AT&T, and Motorola, accusing the industry giants of breaching several of its patents, has made Congress consider major patent reform legislation.  Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), are chief sponsors of Senate bill 515, The Patent Reform Act. The bill was approved by Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2009 by a 15-4 vote. According to critics of current law, including No. 1 patent holder IBM, the current law encourages frivolous law suits and that since U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is understaffed and overwhelmed the agency awards patents it should not.

The new law will save hundreds of millions of dollars in costs of frivolous litigation, will create as many as 100,000 new jobs and make the damage settlements proportionate to the value of patents.

Finally the long wait for purchasing iPads is over in the U.S., but it seems Apple’s legal nightmares regarding iPad’s trademark infringement is just beginning.  After purchasing the trademark for iPad from Fujitsu, EMG Technology said today it would move to add Apple’s iPad tablet to a patent infringement suit filed by EMG against Apple in 2008. EMG originally sued Apple in November 2008 in Texas claiming that Apple’s iPhone infringes on a patent held by EMG. According to EMG, Apple refused to pay reasonable royalties for its use of EMG’s patents relating to navigating internet mobile websites and applications, which were filed in 1999, years before Apple’s mobile patents were filed. This case is set to go on trial on September 12, 2011.

Also, the Taiwanese chip and touch screen maker Elan Microelectronics Corp. asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)to ban the import and sale of Apple products, including iPad, on the grounds that they allegedly infringe patents held by Elan.  The ITC has not ruled on the complaint yet.

The iPad became available in the U.S. on April 3.

Pfizer Inc. has sued generic maker Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd., an Israeli based company, in federal court to block copycat version of its registered trademark Viagra from being sold in the U.S. until 2019. Teva has tentative approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell a generic of the drug upon the March 2012 expiration of its primary patent. Viagra is covered by patent expiring in October 2019 that covers its use in erectile dysfunction.

Under U.S. Intellectual property and patent law;  Method-0f-use patents allow companies to patent a new use for an already covered compound, but they often are not considered as strong as an original composition-of-matter patent. According to Pfizer Teva notified the company of its intention to sell the generic brand back in 2004 but its unclear why Pfizer waited until recently to file its law suit.

Viagra brought $1.9 billion in world-wide sales for Pfizer in 2009.