In Brief:   Hacks to cheat on popular video games results in massive damages.

In Brief:   Automating how to choose an outfit is not patentable subject matter.

Software can have lots of layers like an onion which can be trouble for an infringement lawsuit. %CUT% In CSS, Inc. v. Herrington, CSS complained that the defendants infringed on three of its copyrighted software programs. The programs were made up of a lot of different components, including third party software and abstract ideas. The court’s opinion peeled the layers of CSS’s software onions to get to the decision. First, the court peeled off the function that each program performed because they were "ideas" of the programs and not their expression. Then the court peeled away the client/server architecture used by each of the programs because that was non-copyrightable industry-standard. Next came the third party components because they didn’t belong to either party. Next came the arrangement of the third party components didn’t have enough creativity for copyright protection. Then the court peeled away the layer that was the name/address algorithm because it was unoriginal and not copyrightable. Once the court got to the small onion core of protectable software that was left, the court held that CSS didn’t prove substantially similarity between CSS’s onion core and the defendants’ onion core. CSS may have had something that was protectable, but after peeling away the uncopyrightable components of its software it couldn’t prove infringement.

If you don’t own it, asking for a preliminary injunction is the wrong strategy. %CUT%VitaVet Labs, Inc. sells horse vitamins. Its website was old and clunky. VitaVet hired Integrated Software Solutions, Inc. to update the site. According to the terms of the agreement, VitaVet owned the source code and had an absolute right to access it. VitaVita was to pay Integrated on an incremental basis upon receipt of deliverables. From almost the beginning, things went wrong. Integrated didn’t reach its project development goals. VitaVet paid some of the installments but VitaVet was not pleased with Integrated’s work. Meanwhile, VitaVet’s website was getting clunkier and harder to use. Integrated asserted that the software was finished but VitaVet didn’t agree. So VitaVet refused to pay the remaining installments. Integrated filed suit and sought a preliminary injunction. VitaVet countersued for a preliminary injunction seeking turnover of the source code. Usually, a preliminary injunction just maintains the status quo. The status quo was that Integrated had the source code and wouldn’t have to turn it over to VitaVet. But in this case, the trial court entered a preliminary injunction order that changed the status quo and ordered Integrated to turnover the source code to VitaVet. In affirming the decision, the California Appellate Court reasoned that the balance of equities favored disturbing the status quo in VitaVet’s favor. VitaVet owned the source code and VitaVet had a dire need to upgrade its website. So much for Integrated’s aggressive strategy against VitaVet.

The answer to being ousted from the wonderland of patents is to go through the looking glass to copyrights. %CUT% Since SCOTUS’ 2014 decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, over 70% of software patents have been struck down as being too "abstract". In answer to this, Synopsys registered its software code for static timing analysis (STA) with the U.S. Copyright Office. When AtopTech started selling STA that was eerily close to the one belonging to Synopsys, Synopsys sued for copyright infringement. A jury awarded Synposys over $30 million in damages against AtopTech.