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Smart parts: ever heard of karma?
Late last year news surfaced that DYE and Smart Parts were heading towards a legal confrontation over the design of the Shocker, which is a spool valve marker, and the Matrix, which DYE bought the rights to last year. DYE is suing Smart Parts over what they feel are patent infringements that DYE owns and they got when they bought the rights to the Matrix.
During a routine federal records search, it was found that the usual procedural motions are coming to an end, and the records show that a case management/settlement conference held on August 19th that there will be no settlement at this time in the case, and the Honorable William McCurine, Jr. of the US District Court, Southern District of California will issue a scheduling order regarding discovery in the near future. What this means is that procedures in place to make settlements possible have failed, and it looks like DYE and Smart Parts are going to end up in federal court to decide if Smart Parts is infringing on the patents that DYE owns. There's still a chance that the companies may settle, but the formal attempts by the court to get a settlement have failed.
On August 30th, 2005, the same court issued a protective order in which both companies agreed (stipulated) that in order to protect trade secrets, certain financial information and confidential technical information, both companies would agree to mark certain information as “Confidential” or “For Attorney’s Eyes Only” pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c), which allowed the companies and the court to issue this order. This allows the case to move forward while protecting DYE and SP from releasing information that they don’t want released to the general public.
The order will remain in force for the duration of the current litigation and will stay in force after this particular action and any related actions are discharged by the court or in the event of a settlement. This keeps competitors from using the information that gets released when two companies sue each other from using the information on how much money a company has, or how they do things from getting into the hands of competing companies.
It’s in both company’s interests to keep some information out of the public eye, and ************** doesn’t foresee any difficulty in continuing to report on this case, as the meat of this case will remain open to public scrutiny via the Federal Courts records, which are public information. The information being protected is in our opinion of little interest to players in any case.
taken from 68 cal.
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Smart parts: ever heard of karma?
