Agreement

These Terms of Use govern your use of Patent Litigator (patentlitigator.com) (the "Site"). By using the Site, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site. Our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle information, is part of these Terms.

Who publishes the Site

The Site is published by the Law Office of Michael P. Eddy, 12544 High Bluff Drive, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92130 ("we," "us," "our"). Michael P. Eddy is a member of the State Bar of California (No. 189669) and a patent attorney registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Reg. No. 42,505).

Attorney advertising

The Site is attorney advertising. Results described in any matter depend on its own facts and do not guarantee or predict a similar result in yours.

The Site offers general information about legal developments. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice from a lawyer about your own situation. Laws, rules, and court decisions change, and a case summary may not reflect later events. Do not act or decline to act based on anything on the Site without advice from a lawyer licensed where you are. Reading the Site does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Contacting us

Contacting us does not make you our client. Sending a message through the form, calling, or writing to us does not create an attorney-client relationship. We represent a client only after we confirm we can take the matter and both sides sign a written engagement agreement.

Send only what we need to check for conflicts. Before we can talk about your matter, we must confirm that representing you would not conflict with our duties to other clients. For that, we need only your name, your contact information, the names of the other people or companies involved, and a general description of the matter. Please do not send confidential details, documents, or strategy until we confirm that we can take the matter. Information sent before then may not be protected the way you expect, and sending it could limit our ability to help you.

No duty of confidentiality for form messages. To send a message through the contact form, you must check a box agreeing to this statement: "I understand and agree that the Law Office of Michael P. Eddy has no duty to keep confidential the information I send through this form, and that sending it does not make me a client." That agreement covers everything you send through the form. If you call or write to us instead, the same request applies: send only what we need to check for conflicts.

Your deadlines keep running. Patent, trademark, copyright, and litigation matters have strict deadlines, including limitation periods and Patent and Trademark Office response dates. Contacting us does not stop or extend any deadline. If a deadline is near, say so in your message or call us.

Response times. We do not promise to reply, or to reply by a particular time, and we may decline any matter.

Our coverage of cases and filings

Our articles summarize public records from courts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Copyright Office, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and similar sources. A complaint, petition, or other filing states one side's allegations. An allegation is not a finding, and a party named in our coverage has not been found liable for anything unless the article says a court or agency has ruled.

Each article reflects the record as of the date it was written. Cases change after we write about them, and we may not report every later development. For the current status of a matter, check the docket or the agency record we link to.

Coverage of a matter does not mean that we represent, endorse, or oppose any party to it.

Corrections. We work to be accurate, but we do not guarantee that every article is complete or current. If you find an error, tell us through the contact form at patentlitigator.com/contact. We review every correction request and fix errors we confirm. If you are named in our coverage, our Privacy Policy describes how we handle your requests.

Intellectual property

The text, design, and graphics we create for the Site are owned by the Law Office of Michael P. Eddy and protected by copyright. We do not claim ownership of court filings, patents, trademark registrations, government records, or images and figures reproduced from them; those belong to their owners or are in the public domain. Names and marks of other companies appear only to identify them and report on public records, and their appearance does not mean those companies are affiliated with or endorse us.

What you may do

  • Read, print, and save pages for your own use.
  • Share links to any page.
  • Quote short passages with credit to the Site and a link to the page you quote.

You may not republish whole articles or substantial parts of them, display the Site inside another site's frame, remove copyright or attorney-advertising notices, or suggest that we endorse you or your product.

Automated access

Search engines and other crawlers may crawl and index the Site's public pages as our robots.txt file allows. Automated access must not overload the Site, and no automated tool may use the /api/ paths, which serve only the contact form.

What you may not do

  • Use the Site or the contact form for anything unlawful.
  • Send spam, advertising, solicitations, malware, threats, or harassing messages through the form, or pretend to be someone else.
  • Get around the form's security check, rate limits, or block list, or probe the Site for security weaknesses.
  • Use information from our coverage to locate, contact, or harass people named in it.
  • Interfere with the Site's operation or with other people's use of it.

We may block access by anyone who breaks these rules.

The Site links to court dockets, agency records, and other websites we do not control. We are not responsible for their content, availability, or privacy practices, and a link is not an endorsement. Records on those sites can change or move after we link to them.

Disclaimer of warranties

The Site is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise that the Site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful code.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, or business opportunity, arising from your use of the Site or your reliance on anything in it, even if we were told such damages were possible. If you are dissatisfied with the Site, your remedy is to stop using it. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

Indemnity

If you break these Terms or misuse the Site or the contact form, you agree to cover our reasonable costs, including attorney's fees, of any claim that results.

Governing law and venue

California law governs these Terms and your use of the Site, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute about them will be decided only in the state or federal courts located in San Diego County, California, and you consent to those courts' jurisdiction.

Other terms

  • Engagements. These Terms do not govern any attorney-client relationship. A signed engagement agreement does.
  • Changes. We may change these Terms by posting a new version here with a new effective date. Using the Site after a change means you accept the new version.
  • Severability. If any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
  • No waiver. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
  • Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Site.

Contact

Questions about these Terms: use the contact form at patentlitigator.com/contact, call (800) 770-0940, or write to Law Office of Michael P. Eddy, 12544 High Bluff Drive, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92130.