The case of the day is O’Keeffe v. Adelson (11th Cir. 2016). This is the appeal from In re Application of O’Keeffe (S.D. Fla. 2015), which I covered. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson sued Wall Street Journal reporter Kate O’Keeffee in Hong Kong for defamation after she described him as a “scrappy, foul-mouthed billionaire from working class Dorchester, Mass.”
Continue reading Case of the Day: O’Keeffe v. Adelson
The case of the day is In re King.com Ltd. (N.D. Cal. 2016). King, a Maltese company, is the developer of the Candy Crush video game. It owned the European Candy Crush trademark and related marks. It sued Storm8 Studios LLC and TeamLava LLC in the Civil Court of Malta, alleging that their Candy Blast Mania game infringed the Candy Crush mark. The Maltese court stayed the action pending EU Intellectual Property Office review of a challenge to the validity of the marks. King brought an application under § 1782 seeking leave to depose Perry Tam, Chak Ming Li, and William Siu, Storm8 and TeamLava executives, for use in the Maltese action (after the stay is lifted). At the ex parte stage, King argued that the Maltese action would necessarily continue whatever the outcome of the validity proceedings, because several of the marks at issue in the infringement lawsuit were not at issue in the validity proceeding; that the validity proceedings might take a decade to complete; and that discovery now was important because Malta imposes no obligation to preserve evidence and “Respondents had a history of changing corporate forms.” The court granted the application.
After the court granted the application, the Maltese court entered an order requiring preservation of documentary evidence but denying King’s request for discovery. The respondents then moved to quash the US subpoena.
Continue reading Case of the Day: In re King.com
The case of the day is Knaggs v. Yahoo! Inc. (N.D. Cal. 2016).
Do you remember McArthur Wheeler, the bank robber who robbed a bank in broad daylight with no disguise? He was caught immediately after the police broadcast the security footage showing him holding up the bank. When they arrived to arrest him, he was incredulous that they had caught him. “But I was wearing the juice!” he said, as they took him off to jail.
Wheeler told police he rubbed lemon juice on his face to make it invisible to security cameras. Detectives concluded he was not delusional, not on drugs — just incredibly mistaken.
Wheeler knew that lemon juice is used as an invisible ink. Logically, then, lemon juice would make his face invisible to cameras. He tested this out before the heists, putting juice on his face and snapping a selfie with a Polaroid camera. There was no face in the photo! (Police never figured that out. Most likely Wheeler was no more competent as a photographer than he was as a bank robber.) Wheeler reported one problem with his scheme. The lemon juice stung his eyes so badly that he could barely see.
