3. Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co.
In 1893, a man named Henry Perky began making a pillow-shaped cereal he called Shredded Whole Wheat. John Harvey Kellogg said that eating the cereal was like "eating a whisk broom," and critics at the World Fair in Chicago in 1893 called it "shredded doormat." But the product surprisingly took off. After Perky died in 1908 and his two patents, on the biscuits and the machinery that made them, expired in 1912, the Kellogg Company, then whistling a different tune, began selling a similar cereal. In 1930, the National Biscuit Company, a successor of Perky's company, filed a lawsuit against the Kellogg Company, arguing that the new shredded wheat was a trademark violation and unfair competition. Kellogg, in turn, viewed the suit as an attempt on National Biscuit Company's part to monopolize the shredded wheat market. In 1938, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Kellogg Company on the grounds that the term "shredded wheat" was not trademarkable, and its pillow shape was functional and therefore able to be copied after the patent had expired.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Ten-Famous-Intellectual-Property-Disputes.html#ixzz28LUg5o11

Michael Bolton vs the Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers isn't as well known a name as Michael Bolton, but unfortunately for Mr. Bolton, they share a song with the same name and some of the same lyrics. The Isley Brothers song was released in 1966 under the name "Love is a Wonderful Thing, Michael Bolton's song was released in 1991.

A suit was brought against Michael Bolton by the Isley Brothers for allegedly lifting parts from their original song of the same name and in 1991 Despite Michael Bolton and the co-author of the song's argument that there was insufficient evidence supporting the jury's findings, the district court found in favor of the Isley Brothers and left the largest award in history for plagiarism in the music industry intact. The Isley Brothers were awarded 5.4 million dollars, the calculation based on sixty-six percent of past and future royalties. (Also taken into account was twenty-eight percent of the past and future royalties of the album Time, Love and Tenderness as Love is a Wonderful thing is contained within that album).