In recent years, “combination litigation,” or disputes that involve multiple overlapping intellectual property claims including patent infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and copyright infringement, have increased as companies determine “exactly what intellectual property is protected and how.”
Two prominent combination disputes relating to software intellectual property claims include Google v. Oracle, which involves both copyright and patent law in a dispute regarding whether protection is given to the functional aspects of Oracle’s Java APIs, and Intellisoft v. Acer, which involves both trade secret and patent law in a dispute regarding whether Acer incorporated Intellisoft’s trade secrets in their software patents.
