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Commvault Sues Cohesity and Rubrik Alleging Patent Infringement

Commvault (a publicly-traded data management and data protection software company headquartered in New York) has quite recently filed Patent Infringement lawsuits against Rubrik (a California-based cloud data management company) and Cohesity (a privately held IT company headquartered in San Jose, California) in federal court in Delaware. Commvault has stated that the companies have altogether infringed upon its seven patents, which correspond to a plethora of widely used data management technologies such as data deduplication, cloud, security, snapshots, virtualization, and search. To be specific, Commvault has claimed that both Cohesity and Rubrik have appropriated its patented technologies to short-circuit their development processes and reduce the investment needed, corresponding to building competitive products.

The Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property (IP) Counsel at Commvault, Marcus Muller, has said that the lawsuits hold the responsibility of safeguarding a company’s employees and investors, and also bring about fairness when it comes to competing in the global market. He further mentioned that for over two decades now, Commvault has been successfully delivering solutions to its customers and has become the pioneer in this space. By investing even more than $1 billion in its innovations and inventions, Commvault, at present, owns 900 patents across the globe and over 350 pending patents.

Commvault’s General Counsel, Warren Mondschein, mentioned in a recent statement that Commvault is not at all a litigious company; however when companies like Cohesity and Rubrik commit willful patent infringement, then it is the company’s responsibility to file such lawsuits and take a stand for the protection of its innovations and IP assets.

Lynn Lucas, the Chief Marketing Officer at Cohesity, has said that it is not unusual for legacy vendors to come forward and disrupt the market by filing frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to suppress sales and innovation. Coming to this matter, he stated that Cohesity came to know about the patent infringement lawsuit, not by Commvault’s representatives but through the media. He believes that there is no merit to the lawsuit filed as it is only an attempt to slow down Cohesity’s rapid growth and obstruct its accelerating success.

In an unattributed statement, Rubrik only stated that it doesn’t comment on any pending litigation.

When Commvault was asked why it is filing patent infringement lawsuits against Rubrik and Cohesity corresponding to widely implemented storage software capabilities such as cloud, search, virtualization, to name a few, Muller said the company is not claiming on all the aspects in these technologies and is looking at specific patents. He further declined to speculate about whether the company would file similar lawsuits against other such competitors in the market or not.

Commvault, Cohesity, and Rubrik compete vigorously for data protection and management business in the market. On the one hand, Commvault is a long-established vendor, while Cohesity and Rubrik, on the other hand, are well-funded and rapidly emerging new companies on the block. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Unfolding the Hand-in-Hand Relationship between Blockchain and IP

The to-the-point definition of the term blockchain defines it as an anonymous online ledger that efficiently keeps a growing list of records, known as blocks, which are, in turn, linked using cryptography, where every single block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, transaction data, and a timestamp. As a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, blockchain was invented by an inventor with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2008. The blockchain technology is a concept that is too simple on the one hand and much complex on the other. It is exceedingly diverse in all of its uses. Many experts across the globe believe that the blockchain phenomenon is quite similar to the revolution brought by the Internet and the online world. When it comes to the industrial application of blockchain technology – Finance is undoubtedly one of the leading areas where it is traversing its roots.

The early birds that filed a patent on the blockchain include some of the widely known financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Mastercard International, and Bank of America. In India as well, people have filed a few Patent Applications on the blockchain technology. Other than blockchain, shared economy, smart contracts, file storage, governance, identity management, Internet of Things (IoT), stock trading, data management, e-commerce, healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, luxury and consumer goods, and automotive, are some of the fields in which technology is gaining immense pace and momentum.

It is a matter of fact that yes – Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and the blockchain technology go hand-in-hand. On one side, IPRs protect blockchain, and blockchain, on the other side, can efficiently serve to strengthen the already existing Intellectual Property (IP) regime. Without any doubt, the world, at present, is realizing the enormous potential that blockchain holds, and IPRs are indeed going to play an integral role in coming up with a protected environment for the development of the technology. While taking into account the other side’s aspect, we can observe that the security and reliability offered by blockchain can very well strengthen every phase of the lifecycle of the IPRs including creating licensing agreements, resolving disputes over ownership, identifying counterfeit products, or creating an IP register to keep a record for all forms of IPRs.

Initiatives Taken by the Indian Patent Office

Many nations across the globe have started realizing the true potential of blockchain technology, and India is no exception in this case. The Indian Patent Office (IPO) is doing its best to stay at par with the technological advancements. It expects to be able to predict the timelines for users corresponding to the different actions to be taken by the office. A scientifically-handled workload-based allocation of patent applications to the examiners shall result in making optimal use of human resources available. Automated checking against all the formal requirements, including attachments, application formats, amongst many others, can speed up the entire process by reducing the manual intervention required. With reduced manual intervention, there shall also be an impact on the accountability and transparency procedures in an optimistic way. For achieving all the above measures, the IPO is efficiently establishing a legal framework for a blockchain-based IP registry to commercialize ideas and further protect them.

Final Thoughts

The use of blockchain technology for the benefit of the IP industry is indeed significant. However, like other emerging technologies, blockchain technology has a few setbacks as well. At present, such setbacks include the need for massive processing power and restrictions on the number of transactions per hour. The reality is far away from simple when it comes to the ultimate notion of a method for connecting the IP registries around the world via a single distributed ledger. Remember, successful and proactive management of IPRs using blockchain requires having a standardized platform that is adopted internationally. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Music Companies Including Universal Threaten to Sue TikTok Over Copyright Infringement

A body representing a lot of music publishing companies, including Universal, has quite recently threatened to sue TikTok (a Chinese video-sharing app and social networking platform) over Copyright Infringement.

For quite a while now, TikTok has become immensely popular as millions of people across the globe upload their short video clips on the platform, often indulging in lip-syncing with the background music. However, various music rights-holders think that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app doesn’t own the adequate licenses for the music used in its videos. According to a few sources, such music right-holders are now willing to initiate legal proceedings against TikTok.

David Israelite, the chief executive at the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA – a trade association for the American music publishing industry), has stated that filing a Copyright Infringement Lawsuit against TikTok is most probably the future step as he could estimate that even more than 50% of the music publishing market remains unlicensed with the video-sharing app.

Since last year, the world’s largest music company, Universal Music, has been in licensing negotiations with TikTok as the company is looking forward to extracting more money from the video-sharing platform as its user base balloons. However, the publishing arm of Universal Music still doesn’t have any licensing agreement with TikTok in place. It implies that the songwriters at Universal Music, which include Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Billie Eilish, don’t get paid any royalties as and when their songs are inserted in the background music of TikTok videos. Many people believe that this level of blatant copyright infringement is rarely seen that too by a large multinational company.

A TikTok spokesperson, on the other hand, stated that the platform is proud to support the music industry with a plethora of licenses that it owns in place. He further said that the details of any discussions or agreements between TikTok and its partners remain private and confidential at all times and in all aspects.

The NMPA represents a lot of songwriters and music publishers in the United States and holds a previous track record of suing many widely-known companies such as YouTube, Spotify, and Peloton, and often ending up winning settlement money. In 2016, Spotify had agreed to pay somewhere around $30m to the songwriters for unpaid royalties, and Peloton, earlier this year, settled for an undisclosed amount of money with the NMPA.

When it comes to the music industry, copyrights are generally dealt with separately on the publishing side, which covers songwriting, and the recorded music side, which covers the phase of representing the actual music tracks.

Without any second thoughts, online streaming services have indeed revived the music industry by funneling billions back to well-known music labels. Such companies fiercely safeguard their share of the streaming riches via high stake licensing agreements and negotiations with Google, Spotify, Apple, and many others. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Solaria Corp Sues Canadian Solar Inc Alleging Patent Infringement

A US-based solar technology company, Solaria Corporation, that specializes in designing, developing, and manufacturing crystalline solar modules has quite recently filed a Patent Infringement lawsuit against Canadian Solar Inc., (a publicly-traded company specializing in manufacturing solar PV modules and running large scale solar projects) in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit has claimed that with operations primarily in China and elsewhere in Asia, Canadian Solar has infringed upon Solaria’s US patent. The patent covers a process corresponding to separating the photovoltaic (PV) strips from the solar cells for use in tiled or the widely-known shingled solar modules, which are way more efficient than the conventional solar modules and have higher power as well. Solaria has further asserted in its lawsuit that it had first introduced its high-efficiency, high-density module technology to Canadian Solar in 2014. At that time, the representatives of Canadian Solar had analyzed Solaria’s next-generation shingling technology for a potential licensing contract. After the subsequent collaborations between both the companies over the ensuing year, in which Solaria has disclosed its business strategies and proprietary technology to Canadian Solar under a non-disclosure agreement, there wasn’t any licensing deal made in the end.

In a quite apparent reference to Solaria’s proprietary HDM technology, Canadian Solar came up with its “HiDM” shingled modules in 2019 and started marketing and selling them in the US. Solaria has stated in its complaint filed that Canadian Solar’s HiDM shingled modules infringe its patent, for which, it is now looking forward to seeking injunctive relief and damages.

Suvi Sharma, the CEO at Solaria Corporation, has said that the company has invested even more than $200 million over the last decade in developing its technology for creating the most advanced solar panels across the globe. He further mentioned that if foreign companies like Canadian Solar ignore the value of American patents and violate Solaria’s core Intellectual Property (IP), the company would always take action to enforce and protect the technology that required so much investment and effort to develop.

Solaria Corp has indicated that it may bring some additional claims, including a claim for misappropriation of trade secrets and additional patent infringement claims, if warranted.

With a strong track record and a 20-year history in product development and solar power innovation, Solaria Corp has been efficiently delivering solutions that address a unique set of requirements for commercial and residential solar markets. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com