Software developer SoftView launched a suit against Apple and iPhone and AT&T on Monday, claiming the two are infringing on its patent covering the display of Web pages on mobile devices. SoftView makes a product of the same name, which provides graphic viewers and Web browsers for PDAs, cellphones, smartphones, and other small-screen devices. The SoftView website says the company has been developing its product since 1982 and prominently displays its three patent numbers on its home page. SoftView’s patent covers the scalable display of Internet content on mobile devices.  The product is described as “mobile devices enabled to support resolution-independent scalable display of Internet (Web) content to allow web pages to be scaled (zoomed) and planned for better viewing on smaller screen sizes.  The patent was filed in 2005 and issued in 2008.

Considering this case, Apple is  wrestling with law suit against Nokia, EMG Technology, HTC and Kodak.

A U.S. judge rejected a law suit by Pernod Ricard SA to stop rival Bacardi Ltd from selling “Havana Club” branded rum in the United States. Today’s ruling by Judge Sue Robinson in Wilmington, Delaware, was the latest in more than 13 years of U.S. litigation between the companies over who controls the trademark name. Both companies sell rum under the Havana Club name, Pernod outside the United States and Bacardi within it. Pernod in its 2006 law suit claimed Bacardi had no right use the Havana Club trademark and also accused Bacardi of false advertising by misleading consumers into believing that its rum is made in Cuba, as Pernod’s is, when in fact it is made in Puerto Rico. Havana Club rum was developed by the Arechabala family in Cuba, where the family assets were sized by Castro’s government in 1960.  Since the mid 1990s, a Cuban company has partnered with Pernod to export Cuban-made run under the Havana Club brand, except to the United States because of a U.S. trade embargo.

Bacardi, meanwhile, has said it bought the rights to the Havana Club registered trademark and remaining rum assets still owned by the Arechabala family in 1997.  Judge Robinson concluded that Bacardi’s rum has a Cuban heritage, and also found that Bacardi’s labeling is neither false not misleading as it truthfully shows that its rum is distilled and crafted in Puerto Rico.

This may sound some what shocking but believe it or not some companies have patented your genes.  Biotech companies have patented 10,000 human genes in their effort to profit from the keys  to disease prevention and cure many of them hold.  But the idea of private ownership of things produced inside the human body is coming under scrutiny and a recent law suit struck a blow against it.  The company Myriad Genetics has a registered patent of the human gene for breast cancer. It won a race to identify the gene in 1994, patented the discovery, and since then has controlled completely the testing process for the gene. Simply put, Myriad owns “breast cancer.” This means only Myriad exclusively owns the test to find the gene leading to breast cancer and thus can reject patients  for not paying for the $3,120 test.

A federal judge agreed this week, siding with ACLU against Myriad that the patents on the breast cancer genes were improperly granted because human genes are the product of nature.

After all, patent law was really intended to reward inventors who introduced something new in to the world.