Posts Tagged: "Apple"

On November 9, the Federal Circuit granted Apple’s petition for a writ of mandamus directing the Western District of Texas to transfer Uniloc’s patent infringement suit against Apple to the Northern District of California. Judge Moore dissented, asserting that the majority applied an incorrect standard of review.

In the latest episode of a long-running saga between Apple and Voip-Pal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday denied Apple’s request to reverse the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) determination that 15 claims of Voip-Pal’s voice over IP communications patents were not invalid for obviousness. The Court also affirmed the PTAB’s sanctions order, which Apple had appealed because the Board did not enter adverse judgment against Voip-Pal or vacate the final written decisions and assign a new panel. The opinion was authored by Judge Reyna.

On September 9, a panel of three administrative patent judges (APJs) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a decision denying institution of a petition filed by Apple seeking inter partes review (IPR) proceedings to challenge the validity of a patent owned by Unwired Planet. In denying institution to Apple’s IPR petition, the APJ panel relied on a discretionary multi-factor test referred to as NHK-Fintiv, which weighs the efficiencies of handling validity reviews at the PTAB when parallel proceedings on similar issues are ongoing in U.S. district court. On September 14, a number of “Small Business Inventors” also filed a Notice of Motion and Motion to Intervene and related Complaint in the California case. The Small Business Inventors argue that the disposition of the case will “have lasting impacts on their proprietary and legal interests” that are “distinct from the interests of the Original Plaintiffs, and of the Defendant.”

On August 23, Microsoft filed a declaration in support of Epic Games, Inc.’s August 13th Complaint for Injunctive Relief against Apple, Inc., in which Epic alleged that Apple has been using “a series of anti-competitive restraints and monopolistic practices” through its distribution of software applications (apps) and its processing of consumers’ payments for digital content used within iOS mobile apps (in-app content). The declaration emphasized that Epic Games’ Unreal Engine is “a critical technology” for game creators, including Microsoft. It explained that game engines provide game creators with a “developmental environment that delivers the necessary graphics, rendering, physics, sound, networking, and other technologies that enable them to build games that run on multiple platforms.”

How many types of fruit does one mega-company need to protect its trademarks? Apparently, Apple Inc. believes an image of a pear used in connection with a meal preparation app is too close for comfort and that it is entitled to prevent its use. Bananas, you say? Possibly, but it’s also not uncommon for companies that have invested millions in establishing, promoting and protecting a trademark to take no prisoners in the battle for brand supremacy.

Why are the tech companies so in love with China? Are they are begging for China to steal their intellectual property? Sometimes it feels that way. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. companies that see their fortunes tied to China are raising concerns with the White House over a Trump Administration Executive Order that would ban WeChat from the United States. U.S. companies, including Apple, Ford, Walmart, Walt Disney, Procter & Gamble and Intel “are concerned the administration’s action could effectively cut them off from access to the lucrative China market, for example by ending their ability to accept payments or advertise on WeChat.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today vacated a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California finding that Qualcomm had engaged in unlawful licensing practices and reversed a permanent, worldwide injunction against several of Qualcomm’s core business practices. In May 2019, Judge Lucy Koh issued a 233-page order finding that Qualcomm had engaged in unlawful licensing practices and ordered in part that Qualcomm “must make exhaustive SEP licenses available to modem-chip suppliers on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms and to submit, as necessary, to arbitral or judicial dispute resolution to determine such terms…[and] submit to compliance and monitoring procedures for a period of seven (7) years.” Koh’s ruling was widely criticized, and today’s unanimous opinion was a total reversal of her findings.

In two months, the Supreme Court will hear the oral argument in the long-running Google v. Oracle software copyright case. At issue is the availability of copyright protection for computer programs and in particular the copyright protection of code in Oracle’s Java platform, which Google admits it copied for its Android operating system without obtaining a license. Google also claims its commercial use of that code in competition with Oracle is protected under copyright law’s fair use doctrine, but that is a subject for another day. If adopted by the Supreme Court, Google’s arguments would undermine the Constitutional purposes and specific Congressional intent in enacting the Copyright Act, and along with them the fundamental incentives for new creative expression in software, a building block of so many consumer and industrial products. To better understand how, it helps to start at the beginning: Apple’s groundbreaking release of the iPhone.

On July 8, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in Fitbit, Inc. v. Valencell, Inc., vacated a Final Written Decision of the United States Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an appeal from an inter partes review (IPR) of U.S. Patent No. 8,923,941 (the ’941 patent). In particular, the CAFC held that the PTAB erred in failing to consider the patentability of claims 3-5 of the ‘941 patent when determining that the claims were not unpatentable. Thus, the CAFC vacated the PTAB’s decision and remanded for consideration on the merits of patentability.

On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed in-part and vacated in-part a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Apple, Inc.  In particular, the CAFC concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Uniloc’s requests to seal its own confidential information. However, the CAFC concluded that the district court failed to properly assess whether third-party information, including licensees’ names, addresses and royalty rates, should be sealed.

In IPR 2018-01472, brought by Apple Inc., HTC Corporation, HTC America, Inc., and ZTE (USA) Inc. (Apple), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) last week determined all challenged claims of INVT SPE LLC’s (INVT) Patent No. 6,466,563 to be unpatentable as obvious. The ‘563 patent is titled “CDMA [Code Division Multiple Access] Mobile Station and CDMA Transmission Method” and was issued on October 15, 2002. The patent describes an addition of burst data to the end of a transmission “allow[ing] synchronization with the base station apparatus to be maintained,” thus “making it possible to restart communication immediately.” The transmission interval control circuit also “controls the transmission interval of burst data to N times one slot (N: a natural number) at the end of transmission” to conserve power consumption.

The Supreme Court today denied certiorari in Apple, Inc. v. VirnetX, Inc. et. al., a development that VirnetX said in a press release spells “triumph” for the Internet security software company, following a decade long battle. The underlying judgment was delivered in October 2017, when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas increased the amount of damages to be paid by Apple from $302.4 million in a prior jury verdict up to nearly $440 million for Apple’s infringement of patents covering secure communications in applications like FaceTime.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is set to hear oral arguments tomorrow in the closely-watched case of FTC v. Qualcomm, which will review the issue of whether Qualcomm is required to license its standard essential patents (SEPs) to modem-chip suppliers, after the district court determined that the company’s “no license, no chips” policy violated U.S. antitrust law. In May 2019, Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a 233-page order finding that Qualcomm had engaged in unlawful licensing practices and ordered in part that Qualcomm “must make exhaustive SEP licenses available to modem-chip suppliers on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms and to submit, as necessary, to arbitral or judicial dispute resolution to determine such terms…[and] submit to compliance and monitoring procedures for a period of seven (7) years.”

Andrei Iancu, the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has a real mess on his hands. This particular mess relates to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and the astonishing reality that the Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) on the PTAB are not bound by any Code of Judicial Conduct, as is applicable to Article III federal judges. Instead, PTAB Judges are only bound by the same ethics standard that applies to all other employees, which requires them to recuse themselves from any decisions relating to former employers for one year. That is how several PTAB Judges have been able to adjudicate inter partes review (IPR) and covered business method (CBM) challenges filed by a former litigation client – Apple, Inc. What is scandalous is the dismissal of this behavior in the recently filed amicus brief filed at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) in the matter of Apple, Inc. v. Voip-Pal, Inc., Nos. 2018-1456, 2018-1457. In this case there are no clean hands, although you can certainly feel for the patent owner.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments over copyright status of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated; the Federal Circuit remands Ericsson appeal to calculate release payment in patent license; Apple, Ford and others urge the USPTO to retain policy against injunctions on companies practicing SEPs; Huawei asks the Fifth Circuit to undo the FCC’s ban preventing it from supplying U.S. networks; Sergey Brin and Larry Page relinquish executive duties at Google; U.S. antitrust regulators explore Amazon’s cloud business; Washington politicians send letter to ALI over Copyright Restatement Effort concerns; and Qualcomm challenges Judge Koh’s class action certification at the Ninth Circuit.