Mitsubishi, Apple, Halliburton: Intellectual Property

BLOOMBERG [14/02/13]

By Victoria Slind-Flor

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. failed to persuade a U.S. judge that General Electric Co. infringed its patent on wind turbine technology. 

The U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida ruled on Feb. 8 that Mitsubishi Heavy doesn’t get anything on its claim of infringement and General Electric won its counterclaim for judgment of non-infringement, according to a posting from court clerk Sheryl Loesch. The ruling upheld a July 5 decision in favor of General Electric that eliminated a need for a trial. 

The court, in its interpretation of the claims in Mitsubishi’s patent 7,452,185, “has too narrowly interpreted the patent’s scope,” Mitsubishi Heavy said in a statement Feb. 12. The company has the option to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Washington-based court that hears appeals of patent cases. 

Mitsubishi Heavy, based in Tokyo, sued Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric in 2010 claiming infringement of a patent which applies to technology to reduce the burden on a wind turbine by controlling the pitch angle of the blades in accordance with the blade rotation angle and other factors. 

“Mitsubishi Heavy will quickly issue notification if there’s any progress that merits disclosure,” Hideo Ikuno, a spokesman for the company, said in a phone interview yesterday.

The case is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. v. General Electric Co., 6:10-cv-00812-JA-GJK, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (Orlando). 

Trademark

Apple, Gradiente Electronica Must Share Brazilian IPhone Mark

Apple Inc., doesn’t have the sole right to use the iPhone trademark in Brazil, that country’s IP regulators ruled, the BBC reported. 

Gradiente Electronica, a Brazilian company, registered the mark in 2000, according to the BBC. 

Apple had contended it was entitled to sole use of the mark because Gradiente Electronica took 12 years from its registration of the mark to produce a product and didn’t use the mark between January 2008 and this month, according to the BBC. 

Brazil’s Institute of Intellectual Property said that while Apple doesn’t have the exclusive right to use the mark with telephones, it can use it exclusively for other products, such as clothing or software, the BBC reported.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

‘I Drank Halliburton Fracking Fluid,’ Colorado Governor Says

In efforts to support drilling companies’ desires to keep from disclosing the ingredients in the fluids they use for the hydraulic fracturing process, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper told a U.S. Senate committee that the fluid is so safe that he has even drunk it, the Washington Times reported. 

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources he said that if companies such as Houston- based Halliburton Co. -- which produced the fluid he drank -- were required to disclose all the ingredients that they consider trade secrets, “they wouldn’t bring it into our state,” the Washington Times reported. 

The fluid was comprised entirely of ingredients from the food industry, he told the committee, and is “a benign fluid in every sense,” according to the newspaper. 

Fracturing fluid is forced into the ground to break apart rock structures and release oil or gas, the newspaper reported.