Freedom Wireless, Inc. v. Boston Communications Group, Inc.
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
220 F. Supp. 2d 16 (2002)

- Written by Kelli Lanski, JD
Facts
Daniel Harned worked for a space-technology company called Orbital. Harned had an employment contract with Orbital in which Harned agreed that all inventions related to Orbital’s methods of conducting business that he conceived of or made during his employment with Orbital belonged to Orbital. Harned further agreed to comply with Orbital’s reasonable requests to assign patent rights for those inventions to Orbital. During his employment with Orbital, Harned conceived of and invented technology relating to prepaid wireless-telephone billing, obtaining two patents. Orbital did not do any work in the wireless-telephone or telephone industries or ask Harned to assign the patent rights to Orbital. Harned subsequently worked for Freedom Wireless, Inc. (Freedom) (plaintiff) and transferred ownership of his two patents to Freedom. Freedom later sued Boston Communications Group, Inc. (BCG) (defendant) for patent infringement. BCG moved for summary judgment, arguing that Harned’s employment agreement with Orbital had assigned ownership rights for Harned’s invention to Orbital, meaning Freedom was not the rightful owner of the patents and had no standing to sue for patent infringement.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Harrington, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 815,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.