23andMe's IP Claims Against Ancestry.com; All About the GDPR; Protecting Seismic Data in the Oil Patch

Here's a summary of interesting developments in intellectual property, technology, social media, and Internet law for the week ending June 1, 2018.

23andMe Hits Ancestry.com with Multiple Intellectual Property Claims

23andMe has sued rival genealogy company, Ancestry.com LLC (“Ancestry”) in federal district court over claims of patent infringement, false advertising; and has also petitioned for trademark cancellation of Ancestry’s registration of “ancestry.” Currently, Ancestry is the largest for-profit genealogy company. In the recent dispute between the two companies, 23andMe has sued Ancestry for patent infringement over their patent, U.S. patent number 8,463,554, entitled “Finding relatives in a database,” which covers a systematic method of analyzing DNA in databases and identifying those strands, regions, or portions that are “identical by descent” in matching regions of the DNA genome. Read more about the kinds of intellectual property claims.

What Do You Need to Know About the GDPR?

Over the last few weeks you might have noticed an influx of new emails and paper mail notifying you about changes to the privacy policies of services that you may often use online. A lot of this has to do with the fact that a new European Union Law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into effect May 25, 2018. The GDPR is the European Union’s new, overarching privacy law and is aimed at giving consumers more control over their personal data in an effort to force companies to provide more transparency over what information they collect as well as to ensure that the personal data collected is well cared-for and adequately protected. Read more about the implications surrounding the GDPR.

Treasure Maps: How to Protect Seismic Data in the Oil Patch

Seismic data has long been considered highly-valuable in the oil and gas industry. So much so that people in the industry often call seismic data maps “treasure maps” because they “show you where the gold is” by identifying the best locations to drill in an oil or gas prospect. Seismic data owners often provide access to or share their seismic data when looking to collaborate or sell an oil and gas prospect. Seismic data owners encounter several issues when determining whether to share the seismic data; how to share the seismic data; and who to share the seismic data with. Read more about safeguarding seismic data.

Click to read last week's Weekly IP Buzz.

For more posts, see more at our intellectual property law blog.

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Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. He also co-founded Project K, a charitable movement devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time, and publishes Thriving Attorney, a blog dedicated to exploring the business of the practice of law, productivity and performance for attorneys, and other topics such as law firm leadership and management, law firm culture, and business development for attorneys.

Click to learn more about Darin M. Klemchuk's law practice as an intellectual property lawyer.