District Court Permits Facebook’s Trademark Suit to Proceed Against Teachbook.com By Albert Wang – Edited by Abby Lauer Facebook, Inc. v. Teachbook.com LLC, No. 11-cv-3052 (N.D. Ill. September 26, 2011) Slip Opinion The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied defendant Teachbook’s motion to dismiss a trademark infringement suit brought by social networking site Facebook. Judge Aspen, writing for the court, held that Facebook had pled sufficient facts to survive Teachbook’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion. The court declined to ... Read More...

By Andrew Segna Google Acquires Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion Google announced on August 15, 2011 that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. Ars Technica reports that this purchase was motivated in part by Google’s desire to acquire Motorola’s patents and to protect its Android mobile platform, as this deal will give Google control of more than 17,000 patents in the mobile arena and 7,000 patent applications. This acquisition comes in light of Google accusing Microsoft, ... Read More...

Apple’s Trademark Claim to the Term “App Store” Fails on Preliminary Injunction Motion By Samantha Kuhn – Edited by Abby Lauer Apple, Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc., No. C 11–1327 PJH, 2011 WL 2638191 (N.D. Cal. July 6, 2011) Slip Opinion hosted by Scribd.com On July 6, the District Court for the Northern District of California denied Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin Amazon.com from using the term “App Store.” The court found that Apple’s claims of trademark infringement ... Read More...

Ninth Circuit Vacates Injunction in Keyword Advertising Case By Kaethin Prizer – Edited by Kassity Liu Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., No. 10-55840 (9th Cir. Mar. 8, 2011) Slip Opinion The Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction granted by the district court to Advance Systems Concepts (“Systems”) in a trademark infringement case involving the use of keyword advertising. The court found that the lower court erred in its analysis of whether Network Automation’s keyword advertising, which targeted ... Read More...

Plaintiff’s Lanham Act false association claims against Google AdWords program survive motion to dismiss By Abby Lauer – Edited by Matt Gelfand Jurin v. Google, No. 2:09-cv-03065-MCE-KJM (E.D. Cal. Feb. 14, 2011) Slip Opinion hosted by Scribd.com The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California denied in part and granted in part Google’s motion to dismiss in a case involving trademark infringement and breach of contract claims against the search engine. While granting Google’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s ... Read More...