Wednesday, October 15, 2008

See Peanuts, op. cit.


Good ol' Charlie Brown. Always good for a legal analogy; now, with footnotes!
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James Robertson in Washington invoked the cartoon character in explaining https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2006cv1014-97 why he would not dismiss a multi-faceted patent infringement case pitting Dow Jones & Co. against Ablaise. The latter company patented methods for generating web pages based on user preferences. After a year of grinding discovery, Ablaise wanted to yank one of its patents out of the case right before it was time for summary judgement.
Robertson likened Ablaise's slippery move to "rewarding Lucy for snatching the ball away from Charlie Brown." Judge Robertson then elaborated with a footnote that for my money beats that tired old Carolene Products footnote number 4 hands down. Opines the judge:
"The analogy is admittedly imperfect. Charlie Brown and 2 Lucy were at least nominally on the same side, and Lucy didn’t want to keep the ball -- she just didn’t want Charlie Brown to have the satisfaction of kicking it."
Coming next: Garfield v. Lasagna.


1 comment:

Rob said...

Do you know the current status of this case? The company I work for was sued by these idiot patent trolls (Ablaise) years ago. I don't even know what happened, but I'm pretty sure we didn't have the resources to fight it. I just want to know if DJ won or if they're still fighting these bastards.