The International Football Association, soccer’s governing body, has warned PepsiCo Inc. that its potentially infringing the group’s trademark rights.  The Zurich-based Federation Internationale de Football Association, commonly known as FIFA, objected to a question Pepsi placed on a Chinese web site in April that made reference to the World Cup.  In a cease-and-desist letter, counsel for FIFA told Pepsi such references are “misleading” and demanded both that it be removed and that Pepsi issue an apology.  FIFA has already more than 3,000 cases involving trademark infringements or unauthorized attempts to piggyback marketing to Word Cup promotions.

The FIFA World Cup 2010 will start June 11 in South Africa.

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.

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.

In one of the most closely watched trademark cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that eBay does not infringe on Tiffany’s trademarks even though the online auction site features plenty of counterfeit goods billed as being legitimately produced by the luxury jeweler.  The 45-page opinion notes that eBay does not deny its knowledge that Tiffany products sold on eBay were often counterfeit.  However; the court agreed with the lower court’s 2008 decision that sale of some counterfeit Tiffany goods on eBay does not constitute trademark infringements by eBay.  The court ruled that eBay takes the appropriate steps to combat sales of counterfeit and in order for Tiffany to win a false advertising claim, Tiffany will have to produce evidence that consumers were confused by the advertisements.

This recent case is major development in an international debate over how much eBay and other consumer resale cites should be required to do in order to police counterfeit sales.  The results of these trademark litigations have been mixed for eBay outside the U.S.  A French court ruled in 2008 that eBay had not done enough to stop counterfeit sales and ordered eBay to pay $63 million fine. Another French court six weeks ago ordered eBay to pay $275,000 to Louis Vuitton, however;  In Belgium, the court reached an opposite conclusion in favor of eBay.