The VLW Blog

Don’t like being called a “patent troll”? Tell it to the judge.
DNT LLC is suing Sprint and Nextel over patents covering various wireless modem cards offered by Sprint and other vendors. The case raises round-peg-in-a-square-hole questions like, does a USB device fit into a credit card slot and thus meet the test to prove [...]

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We have reported on how the new ‘Twiqbal’ standard has raised the bar for pleading a federal complaint.
The latest word on appellate review of the heightened pleading standard finds the 4th Circuit agreeing with Alexandria U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee’s dismissal of an auto dealership’s defamation claim against a Web site that posted consumer [...]

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U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema decided today not to sanction SPH America LLC, a Reston-based company that attempts to enforce patents on mobile phone technology, even though she said the suit it filed against the national law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP was groundless.
SPH accused the law firm of disclosing confidential information that it [...]

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U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad seemed reluctant this week to pull the plug on a lawsuit alleging Rockingham Memorial Hospital is reneging on a deal to share revenue from a consultant’s secret idea to boost Medicare reimbursement.
At a hearing in Harrisonburg, RMH lawyer Daniel Fitch argued the consultant’s proposal was nothing more than the application [...]

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U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is not letting a frequent filer patent company leave the courthouse quietly in its lawsuit against the national law firm Foley & Lardner.
Brinkema has set a hearing for Friday, Oct. 9, for SPH America to show cause why its lawsuit should not be dismissed with prejudice with costs awarded to [...]

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Dueling lawyer Web sites were left standing when the dust settled in Alexandria federal district court last week.
Two Northern Virginia lawyers with the same surname developed the Web sites to market their separate specialties.
H. Jay Spiegel, a Mt. Vernon IP lawyer, is at “SPIEGELAW.COM,” while Alexandria employment lawyer Steven M. Spiegel uses “SPIEGELLAW.COM.”
Each domain [...]

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A Suffolk club owner’s luck ran out in Norfolk federal court last Friday.  
The club owner had told music-licensing giant ASCAP that he would take his chances on operating without an ASCAP license, according to a lawsuit filed by the publishers. The plaintiffs included “Gone Gator Music,” “Floated Music,” “Milksongs” and “Hideout Records.”   
The suit [...]

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When we link to other internet sites on this blog, or on the main VLW Web site, we generally embed the address of the site into the text.  That underlines the text and makes it a “hyperlink,”  the commonly recognized method of referring people from one Web page to another page, somewhere else on the [...]

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West has embarked on publication of independent “white papers” on topics of legal interest, and one of the first is a piece by Virginia legal scholar Rod Smolla (W&L Law Dean, former UR Law Dean) on Viacom v. Google. The case involves issues that arise from the proliferation of “homemade” videos on the internet, [...]

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U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael F. Urbanski yesterday dismissed a $2 million lawsuit filed by a Lynchburg woman claiming that the company that makes pre-moistened Pledge and Windex wipes stole her idea.
The News & Advance has the follow-up story.

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