Wal-Mart has has reached a settlement of a wage and hour class action against Wal-Mart in Minnesota captioned Braun et al. v. Wal-Mart, Inc. et al.

The class includes approximately 100,000 current and former hourly associates who worked at Wal-Mart Stores and Sam’s Clubs locations in Minnesota from September 11, 1998 through November 14, 2008, and the settlement provides for payment by Wal-Mart of up to $54.25 million, including a substantial payment to the State of Minnesota. Also, as part of the settlement, Wal-Mart has agreed to maintain various electronic systems, surveys, and notices that will further compliance with wage and hour policies and Minnesota laws. The settlement is subject to approval by the trial court, and the exact amount paid to class members will depend on the court’s approval as well as on the number and amount of claims that are submitted by class members.

All parties believe this settlement is fair and reasonable for all concerned. “We are satisfied with this settlement, gratified that these hourly workers will now be paid after seven years of litigation, and happy that the State of Minnesota will receive the largest wage and hour civil penalty in its history,” said Justin Perl, of the Minneapolis law firm of Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand, co-lead counsel for the class. Wal-Mart spokesperson David Tovar added, “Wal-Mart is pleased that the court in Minnesota ruled in its favor on many claims. Our policies are to pay every associate for every hour worked and to make rest and meal breaks available for associates. Any manager who violates these policies is subject to discipline, up to and including termination. We remain committed to providing good jobs with real career opportunity to the 1.45 million U.S. associates who choose to work for Wal-Mart and serve our customers every day.”

FreePatentsOnline.com has launched an informational site, www.citepatents.com, to help bloggers, journalists and others easily reference patent information, and to provide a free patent search box for adding to websites with a single mouse click.

Due to an impartial, peer-reviewed nature, patents are an important, frequently cited source of highly detailed, accurate technical information. Patents are uniquely powerful in citation; any writer on the web who refers to a patent with a hyperlink is footnoting a highly-credible document.

“Across the international spectrum, tens of millions of patents now exist, going back hundreds of years,” said Erik Reeves, CEO of FreePatentsOnline. “It is a profoundly broad database of how things work, from every continent. Citing a patent with FPO is easy, because the FPO URL taxonomy is crystal clear.”

For example, RIM, the firm behind the BlackBerry, may have avoided its patent infringement lawsuit and settlement payment of $612.5 million to Annandale, Virginia-based NTP by simply searching CitePatents.com or FreePatentsOnline.com for an electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors patent. The result is http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6317592.html.

“I always reference FPO when I cite patents,” said Blaise Mouttet of the TinyTechIP blog. “They have the best interface and features in the inventions-database space, and as soon as they made their search capability available outside their site, I placed it on my blog right away, as a service to my readers.”

At CitePatents.com, the html behind the FPO SearchBox can be grabbed and placed on a website or blog. Also, CitePatents.com has information on the differences between patents and patent applications, patent numbering, and the taxonomy of a patent document.

I prefer to report about when patents are utilized properly as opposed to simply being the focus of lawsuits, and that is what occurred this past week.

Frontier Communications and Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P., headquartered in Los Angeles, announced today the settlement of patent litigation between the parties. As part of the settlement, Frontier Communications Corporation has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum for a nonexclusive license under a comprehensive portfolio of patents that Katz owns relating to interactive voice applications.

The patents held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P. cover a wide range of interactive technology including automated forms of: customer service, prescription refill services, securities trading, merchandising, prepaid services, telephone conferences, registration, home shopping, as well as functions involved in securing information from databases by telephone, interactive cable transactions, and various other uses of toll free and local numbers.

Ronald A. Katz stated, “We welcome Frontier Communications Corporation to the group of leading telecommunications companies who have purchased a license under this portfolio.”

Mr. Katz is the named inventor on a large number of patents primarily in the fields of telecommunications and computing. He also formed Telecredit, Inc., the nation’s first on-line real time credit and check cashing authorization system, and was awarded a patent as co-inventor of that technology.

When we talk about patents it is usually referencing a patent infringement lawsuit, however I thought (given the Holiday Season), that it would be great to talk about what happens when patents are utilized prior to a lawsuit!

General Patent Corporation (GPC) announced today on behalf of its client, Digital Technology Licensing LLC (DTL), that it has licensed a key cell phone patent to Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson).

DTL owns U.S. Patent No. 5,051,799 titled “Digital Output Transducer” (Patent), which is an essential patent for Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) codec and other cellular communication standards. The patented technology is also used to assure backward compatibility of cell phone handsets and base stations. Other applications of this patented technology include Bluetooth headsets.

“We are very pleased to grant a license to Sony Ericsson,” said Paul Lerner, GPC’s Sr. Vice President and General Counsel. “We will continue with our efforts to license this key patent and to vigorously enforce the intellectual property rights of our client,” he concluded.