For our weekly SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, August 10th, 2020 we will discuss the following cases:

Tesla v. Rivian (Superior Court Complaint) (Here)

Famed auto maker Tesla recently filed a lawsuit against a competitor Rivian. The complaint alleges trade secret-misappropriation and interestingly enough was filed in state court and does not raise an issue under the federal DTSA. What also makes the case interesting is a few years ago, “in the spirit of open source” Tesla made a post regarding open source and its patents.

United States v. Levandowski (N.D. Cal)

An engineer from Google left to work for a competitor and allegedly downloaded proprietary information from Google. The Defendant was eventually prosecuted by the US government, and entered into a plea deal.

We will review

A statement by the department of justice

The indictment

Royal Crown Co. v. Coca-Cola (CAFC) (Here)

Coke filed several trademark applications to register various coke products along with the mark ZERO. Royal Crown, a competitor in the beverage business sued, requesting that coke disclaim the ZERO portion of the marks. Coke on its own volition decided to disclaim the ZERO portion of the Mark. Royal Crown unhappy with the result appealed to the Federal Circuit. Said the court, “Royal Crown has obtained what it requested in its opposition, disclaimer of the term ZERO in each of the trademark applications at issue. The Board’s decision reflects entry of those disclaimers. Accordingly, there is no case or controversy for this court to decide.”

All are invited to attend. Due to the Covid-19 situation the meeting will be conducted electronically via zoom. Join us by using this link at 12:00pm PT. This activity is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit. If you will be joining us, please RSVP to Elisha Manzur by 9 am Monday morning.