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By Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to use a dispute over a Spider-Man toy to consider overturning a 50-year- old patent decision.

The justices said Dec. 12 that they will hear an appeal from a man who patented a toy that uses foam string to mimic the comic-book character’s web-shooting ability. The inventor, Stephen Kimble, is suing Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel unit, which owns the Spider-Man franchise. He said the company reneged on a contract to pay him royalties on sales of Marvel’s Web Blaster toys.

At issue is the survival of a 1964 Supreme Court decision that says royalty agreements can’t extend past the expiration of a patent. Because Kimble’s patent expired in 2010, a federal appeals court agreed with Marvel that he wasn’t entitled to royalties after that.

In his appeal, Kimble said the 1964 ruling can’t be squared with modern antitrust analysis. Marvel and the Obama administration urged the high court not to take up the case.

Marvel has paid Kimble and a partner $6 million under an agreement they struck in 2001.

The case is Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises, 13-720.

For more patent news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Ex-HSBC Employee Falciani Said Indicted in Swiss Data Theft

A former computer technician at HSBC Holdings Plc’s Swiss unit, “celebrated as a hero abroad,” was indicted in Switzerland on charges of industrial espionage and violating bank secrecy laws, prosecutors said.

The Swiss attorney general’s office, without identifying the suspect as is its custom, said in a statement Dec. 11 that the country was prepared to try him in absentia. The statement refers to Herve Falciani, the technician accused of stealing client data in 2008 from HSBC’s Geneva office and passing it to French authorities, said a person with direct knowledge of the case who asked not to be identified.

HSBC was charged in France last month with money laundering through tax fraud and illegal marketing in a case stemming from the data theft. The bank faces a similar investigation in Belgium and last month agreed to pay $12.5 million to settle claims with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its Swiss private-banking unit solicited U.S. investors without being registered.

William Bourdon, Falciani’s lawyer, said he was in court and not immediately available to respond for comment.

Falciani was detained in Geneva in December 2008 and questioned for several hours before being released. He was asked to return the next day but instead left for France and did not return. He lived in France for a time and turned up in Spain in mid-2012. Switzerland has failed in efforts to extradite him from France and Spain.

In its statement, the attorney general’s office said the defendant has sometimes been “celebrated as a hero abroad.”

Swiss law forbids bank employees from passing account data to third parties unless the bank’s clients or Switzerland’s tax authority approves the disclosure. Data thieves risk prison sentences of as long as three years if convicted.

Copyright

Voga Ordered to Block Danish Access to Furniture Sale Website

Voga Furniture Ltd., a U.K. retailer, was ordered to block potential customers with Danish Internet protocol addresses from its website over copyright issues, the U.K.’s technology news website the Register reported.

The ruling was aimed at protecting Danish furniture designers, whose copyrights run as long as 70 years after their deaths, according to the Register.

In the U.K., a similar law gives copyright protection for only 25 years from the first sale of the product, the Register reported.

According to a Danish court ruling, Voga was targeting Danish customers through Google Adwords and offering free delivery to Denmark, according to the register.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trademark

Two Breweries Settle Dispute Over Hiker Image on Labels

Breweries that were involved in a dispute over a beer label image have settled, according to court filings.

Long Trail Brewing Co. of Bridgewater Corners, Vermont, sued Duluth, Minnesota’s Bent Paddle Brewing Co. for trademark infringement in federal court in Vermont Aug. 29.

The Vermont brewer objected to a label Bent Paddle used on its Trail series of beers, featuring the silhouette of a hiker. According to court papers, Long Trail registered its hiker- silhouette image as a U.S. trademark and used it on its label.

According to a stipulated agreement approved by the court Dec. 4, Bent Paddle will quit using the image on its packaging and promotional material and will void the use of a mountain scene, display of a map and the use of a particular print font as elements of its label. The Minnesota brewery may continue to distribute its products in the disputed labels that were made by Oct. 15.

Each party agreed to pay its own attorney fees and litigation costs.

The case is Long Trail Brewing Co., v. Bent Paddle Brewing Co., 14-cv-00186, U.S. District Court, District of Vermont (Brattleboro).