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Howard Rice's Intellectual Property Litigation practice runs the gamut from patent, trademark and copyright, to trade secret, unfair competition, false advertising and rights of publicity matters. For more than 45 years, we have helped clients—from Internet start-ups to publishing giants, major league sports franchises to multimedia developers, film producers to internet merchants—protect, maximize and exploit the value of their intellectual property. The firm has particularly deep experience in the computer software, video-game publishing, printing and imaging supplies, Internet, retail and medical device industries. The firm's intellectual property attorneys represent clients in sophisticated litigation in a variety of federal and state forums on these matters, including the Federal Circuit Court, the Patent and Trademark Office Board of Appeals and Interferences, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, the International Trade Commission, and the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center. Areas of Focus
Our patent litigators represented Research In Motion Limited (RIM) in its widely publicized litigation against NTP, a patent assertion company that sought to shut down RIM’s sales of BlackBerry products and services in the United States. The litigation was extensively covered in the media and involved such cutting legal edge issues as the ability of courts to deny injunctive relief to patent assertion companies, the effect that the invalidation of patents by the Patent and Trademark Office may have on ongoing litigation, and the extraterritorial reach of U.S. patent law. Howard Rice has served as one of RIM's principal counsel since RIM's appeal of the original trial court ruling to the Federal Circuit, and represents RIM in trademark and anti-counterfeit litigation. In the landmark case Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., we successfully defended Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc., a toy manufacturer, through trial and to the U.S. Supreme Court against claims that its video game enhancer, Game Genie®, created unlawful derivative works of the Nintendo copyrighted video games. Sealing the victory, we also obtained a $15 million judgment on behalf of Galoob, due to the wrongful preliminary injunction that had been entered at Nintendo's request before our involvement in the case. On behalf of Hewlett-Packard Company, we regularly bring trademark infringement litigation against parties around the country, particularly parties trafficking in counterfeit printer or toner cartridges and hard drives. We have recently sued and settled with such parties in Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and California. In one case, we obtained an ex parte seizure—executed at 6 a.m. in the dead of winter in suburban Illinois—of thousands of counterfeit inkjet cartridges. We have also brought enforcement proceedings against numerous parties using trademarks that infringe on Hewlett-Packard's trademarks. In addition, we regularly work with Customs and Border Protection to prevent counterfeit goods from entering the country. Together with the ACLU of Southern California, a team of Howard Rice directors successfully represented Thomas Forsythe, an artist who had been sued by Mattel, Inc. over the use by Forsythe of Barbie dolls in certain artistic photographs, in Mattel, Inc. v. Walking Mountain Productions. The artist's photographs critiqued what the artist believed were the sexist and shallow consumerist values that the doll represents. This case raised issues of fair use, parody and free speech in the context of a trademark and copyright infringement action. After 18 months of hard-fought litigation, our team gained a complete victory for the artist in the trial court, with a Federal District Court granting summary judgment to the artist. The trial court subsequently awarded Howard Rice more than $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees. The firm represented Adaptec, Inc., maker of computer chips, add-on cards and network storage trays, in a trade secrets case against a competitor and two former employees who had misappropriated confidential information before starting work for the competitor. We obtained a TRO, forcing a settlement with the competitor, and continued to prosecute the former employees, who were eventually terminated from the competitor. Representative Clients
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