What kind of company makes no creative works but earns millions of dollars a year suing random people on the internet in the name of copyright law? You guessed it, a copyright troll. Much like patent trolls, copyright trolls are entities that do not create or distribute creative content, yet acquire copyrights to creative works in order to file lawsuits against accused infringers.

From August 29 to September 6, 2015, servers operated by the United States Copyright Office, were down. For more than eight days, hundreds of applicants had to jump through hoops to file a copyright.

The Copyright Office’s electronic filing system, known as “eCO”, was taken offline “to accommodate a scheduled annual power outage to allow routine maintenance by the Architect of the Capitol,” according to the Office.However, at the end of the blackout period, the Library’s information technology office could not bring the servers back online, along with several other Library managed government sites.

In a victory for aerospace company SpaceX, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a decision on August 27th canceling 13 claims in a rocket sea-landing patent owned by competitor Blue Origin, a space venture backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

The patent at issue, U.S. Patent No. 8,678,321 B2 (the “’321 patent”), describes a method of vertically landing a rocket booster on a floating platform after launch.

Commercial banks, investment banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions spend an inordinate amount of time on due diligence: researching a potential debtor’s financial history and quantifying the amount of risk of a particular investment or loan. Much of this diligence can be automated.

There are hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies filed every year. Banks and other financiers use Docket Alarm to research personal and commercial bankruptcy records. Financial institutions can easily see if a potential corporate customer is solvent or has declared bankruptcy in the past. Using Docket Alarm’s API, searches can be automated, leading to an enormous savings in efficiency over manual searching.

In addition to bankruptcies, Docket Alarm automates access to court recordsinvolving your clients' and debtors’ litigation.

Back in February of 2014, German sportswear giant Adidas filed a patent infringement suit against competitor Under Armour, Inc. in United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

Adidas accused Under Armour and its newly acquired fitness tracker subsidiary, MapMyFitness, Inc., of infringing ten of its patents.

Terms and connectors searching allow users to string together multiple complex queries. Say you are searching for §112 issues in a patent case. You may search for “written description invalidity” to find relevant information. However, this search will return any result that uses those three words. By using terms and connectors, you can narrow your query: (written w/3 description) w/10 invalidity. This query indicates that you are looking for results where the word “description” appears within three words of “written”, and “invalidity” appears within ten words of that combination.

Terms and connectors searching is also helpful in finding cases whose characteristics match your own.

50 Cent’s moniker has ceased being figurative— the rapper and business mogul has filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut’s Bankruptcy Court.

Curtis James Jackson III, known by his stage name “50 Cent” or “Fiddy”, started his career as a successful rap artist, rising to the top of the charts and taking in millions of dollars in royalties annually.

On July 26, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must recognize same-sex marriage. The long awaited decision was 5-4, with Justice Kennedy casting the swing vote in favor of upholding same-sex unions. In his opinion for the majority, Kennedy wrote:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.

Docket Alarm’s comprehensive platform has many tools to help you keep track of companies and their legal affairs. For example, Docket Alarm’s email alert tool helps keep you informed of the latest litigation developments involving a specific company. When a new lawsuit is filed that the company is a party to, or when there is a new development in an existing case involving that company, an update will be sent right to your inbox.

To create an email alert for a particular company, simply enter the company’s name in Docket Alarm’s Federal Court Case Alert Tool and click on the “View New Lawsuits” button.

In addition to lawyers and professionals, regular citizens can benefit from having access to Docket Alarm’s legal research platform to uncover litigation history and stay informed of the latest lawsuits and cases. Here are four ways the public can use Docket Alarm to their benefit.

1. Conduct Due Diligence

Citizens can use Docket Alarm to research potential employers or business partners.

Creating a parody of a well-recognized brand is a popular way to captivate the public, à la the “Dumb Starbucks” phenomenon that took the internet by storm last year and had LA residents lining up around the block for a cup of “dumb coffee.”

But is this type of witty commentary legal? Well, as any lawyer will tell you, it depends.

Parody can be raised as a defense to a trademark or copyright infringement lawsuit.

In the News: Docket Alarm is excited to announce that we have been selected as a finalist in Legaltech News’ Innovation Awards for Best Research Product! The award is in recognition of outstanding achievement by legal professionals in their use of technology.

Know Your PTAB Judges: Meet PTAB Judge Trevor Jefferson

In this installment of Docket Alarm’s Know Your PTAB Judge newsletter, Docket Alarm is proud to feature Administrative Patent Judge Trevor Jefferson.

Lenders can join the growing ranks of financial professionals utilizing Docket Alarm to enhance their businesses. Not merely for attorneys, Docket Alarm’s search and analytics platform help lenders easily conduct due diligence and even automate due diligence tasks. This is most beneficial when information on a potential borrower is scarce.

Data points from Docket Alarm can be used to evaluate the level of risk associated with lending to certain borrowers, industries, and geographical areas.

Last week, a Pennsylvania jury handed down one of the first patent infringement verdicts involving drones. Drone Technologies Inc. filed suit against France-based Parrot SA for infringement on two of their patents, U.S. Patents 7,584,071 and 8,106,748.

Parrot is a well-known drone manufacturing company, focusing primarily on the toy and hobby market.

The jury ruled in favor of Drone Technologies Inc., granting $7.8 million in damages.