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By Bloomberg

Google Inc. must face a patent-infringement suit related to its Street View mapping system.

The Mountain View, California-based company had asked the Supreme Court to review an appeal court’s ruling that a patent suit may proceed. The U.S. Supreme Court Monday denied Google’s request.

The suit dates to October 2010, when Vederi LLC of Pasadena, California, accused Google of infringing four patents covering systems and images for enabling visual navigation of a geographic area from a computer terminal. Google argued that Vederi’s patents result in flat images, rather than the spherical ones of Street View.

The trial judge agreed and ruled that Google had won the case. Then a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit said the patents had talked about use of a fish-eye lens, which creates curved images, so they weren’t as limited as the trial judge had decided. The panel ordered the judge to review the case with the new interpretation of what the patents covered.

The Supreme Court, without addressing the merits of the case, simply let the appeals court ruling stand, which means that Google must return to Los Angeles federal court for the patent infringement suit.

The Supreme Court case is Google Inc. v. Vederi LLC, 14-11448. The appeals court case is Vederi LLC v. Google Inc., 13-1057, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower court case is Vederi LLC v. Google Inc., 10cv7747, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles).

TWX Infringement Case Against Apple to Go Ahead Minus One Patent

In a patent dispute that began in March 2013, a review board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said two claims in a patent asserted by TWX Ltd. against Apple Inc. are unpatentable.

The suit, filed in San Francisco federal court, pits the sound-reproduction company spun off from Lucasfilm Ltd. in 2002 against the iPhone maker. Lucasfilm was acquired by the Walt Disney Co. in 2012.

TWX claimed that Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iMac products that incorporate a narrow-profile speaker unit infringed the patents.

In dispute are patents 8,457,340 and 7,433,483. TWX of San Rafael, California, sought court orders barring further infringement and money damages, including a “reasonable royalty.” Apple then asked the court to declare it didn’t infringe the disputed patents and that they were both invalid and unenforceable.

Cupertino, California-based Apple also sought review of the two patents by the U.S. Patent Office, and the court put the case on hold pending resolution of these reviews.

In June 2014, the patent office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board said it wouldn’t review any claims in patent 8,457,340. It did decide to look at three claims of patent 7,433,483.

That board said June 9 that two of the claims of the patent are unpatentable, and that Apple failed to bring sufficient evidence that the third claim was unpatentable.

This leaves Apple facing the infringement allegations with respect to the first patent.

In a June 18 court filing, the parties asked the court to lift the stay on the case. They told the court they plan to submit a proposed case schedule on July 2.

The case is TWX Ltd. v. Apple Inc., 3:13-cv-01161, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

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Copyright

Taylor Swift Makes Apple Back Down on Music Royalty Payments

It took Taylor Swift less than 24 hours to make technology giant Apple Inc. back down.

In the wake of a stinging rebuke from the pop singer, Apple made a rare public about-face on an earlier decision not to pay royalties for songs played on its new streaming-music service during a three-month free trial. Swift penned an open letter on Tumblr, calling the policy “shocking, disappointing and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”

“When I woke up this morning and saw what Taylor had written, it really solidified that we needed a change,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet and software, said in an interview with Billboard Sunday. “And so that’s why we decide we will now pay artists during the trial period.”

Apple Music, which is set to debut with 30 million songs on June 30, is Apple’s big gamble to regain its place as a leader from upstarts like four-year-old Spotify. The plan to withhold royalties during the free-trial period had been criticized by the music industry in the past weeks. Yet Apple couldn’t afford to be publicly shamed by one of the most popular pop stars just days before the introduction of the service.

In her letter, titled “To Apple, Love Taylor,” Swift explained why she planned to withhold her top-charted album “1989” from the service. The seven-time Grammy Award winner said it wasn’t about her, but about “the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success.”

“We don’t ask you for free iPhones,” Swift wrote. “Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”

The reversal isn’t a total loss for Apple, which has more than $190 billion in cash and can easily afford higher royalty payments. It also is generating untold publicity for the new service. Even so, Swift is emerging as the industry’s most high- profile and effective critic of streaming music programs seen as underpaying artists.

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Trademark

Disney, Deadmau5 Settle Trademark Dispute, Newspaper Reports

Walt Disney Co., holder of the Mickey Mouse trademarks, has settled a trademark dispute with DeadMau5, a performer who wears a mouse-head mask with crossed-out eyes, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The Burbank, California-based film company had told the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office it would be harmed if Deadmau5 was allowed to register its mouse-head logo, the newspaper reported.

Deadmau5 -- pronounced “dead mouse” -- and Disney resolved their dispute, counsel for Joel Zimmerman, who performs as DeadMau5, told the Hollywood Reporter.

Earlier, the patent office had rejected one of Deadmau5’s responses to Disney’s opposition, according to the newspaper.

Traditional Medicinals, Nursing Mothers’ Coop in Talks Over Mark

Traditional Medicinals Inc. and an Oregon-based cooperative through which nursing mothers share breast milk for children in need are in settlement talks over a disputed trademark, according to the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Mothers Milk Cooperative of Lake Oswego, Oregon, filed an application in December 2013 to register its name as a U.S. trademark. That mark was registered in September 2014.

In December 2014, Sebastapol, California-based Traditional Medicinals filed a petition with the patent office seeking cancellation of the Oregon group’s trademark, saying it could cause the public to be confused with its own “Mother’s Milk” trademark used for one of its herbal teas. In its petition, Traditional Medicinals accused the breast-milk group of trying to create a false affiliation with the herbal-tea company.

Traditional Medicinals produces two different teas under its Mother’s Milk trademark, with both of them intended to help nursing mothers with breast milk production, according to the company’s website.

According to a patent office notice, cancellation proceedings are suspended through Jan, 6, 2016, to allow for settlement talks.

Traditional Medicinals said in a statement to a Portland television station that “we’re aligned with the cooperative’s mission to support nursing mothers and babies, and we truly hope we can resolve this.”

John Adams Academy Tells High School It Must Change Its Name

A Sacramento law firm has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the leadership of a planned charter high school in Littleton, Colorado, on behalf of a California school, the Denver Post reported.

The letter, from Davis & Leonard LLP, warns organizers of the proposed John Adams High School that it faces potential trademark infringement litigation if it goes ahead with that name, the Post reported.

The firm is representing John Adams Academy of Roseville, Academy, which registered its name as a trademark in 2014, according to the newspaper.

Matthew Kroll, who heads the board of directors for the proposed Colorado school, told the Post the California school “shouldn’t have ownership of the names of presidents of the United States,” and that there are other John Adams high schools in other states, including New York, Ohio and Indiana.