Posts Tagged: "Apple"

On January 19, Qualcomm filed a brief in opposition to Apple’s petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing Apple failed to make the requisite evidentiary showing to obtain Article III standing. In 2017, Qualcomm filed suit against Apple, alleging Apple’s mobile devices infringed five of its patents, two of which are at issue here, U.S. Patent No. 7,844,037 (the ‘037 patent) and U.S. Patent No. 8,683,362 (the ‘362 patent). Apple counterclaimed, urging the court to invalidate those five patents. Additionally, Apple filed a simultaneous challenge to two of the patents through inter partes reviews (IPRs).

On January 19, consumer tech giant Apple filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) asking the agency to institute a Section 337 investigation against Swedish telecom firm Ericsson, asserting a trio of patents related to millimeter wave technology used by electronic devices communicating on mobile 5G networks. The Section 337 complaint is the latest salvo in a legal battle that highlights the mounting tension surrounding standard-essential patents (SEPs) and where infringement litigation fits into the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) obligations that standards-setting organizations (SSOs) impose upon SEP owners.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list indicating it had denied petitions for writs of certiorari in two cases challenging the NHK/Fintiv framework developed by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for discretionary denials of validity trials under the America Invents Act (AIA). In denying petitions from consumer tech giant Apple and generic pharmaceutical firm Mylan Laboratories, SCOTUS has ended the latest challenge to the PTAB’s NHK/Fintiv rule, which has raised the ire of many entities who have found the PTAB to be a very valuable backdoor towards patent invalidation outside of U.S. district court. Both petitions essentially asked the Court whether the PTAB’s application of its NHK/Fintiv rule passes muster under precepts of U.S. administrative or due process law.

In mid-November, consumer tech giant Apple filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit’s decision to dismiss Apple’s appeal of unsuccessful inter partes review (IPR) challenges to the validity of several patents owned by Qualcomm. In that ruling, the Federal Circuit found that Apple’s choice to enter a patent licensing agreement with Qualcomm covering the patents-at-issue extinguished Article III standing as to Apple’s appeals from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The question presented by Apple’s petition is: “Whether a licensee has Article III standing to challenge the validity of a patent covered by a license agreement that covers multiple patents.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today dismissed Apple, Inc.’s appeal of four decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in favor of Qualcomm. The CAFC found that an April 2021 CAFC decision (Apple I) on related PTAB rulings, in which the court found Apple lacked Article III standing, controlled. The opinion for the court was authored by Judge Prost. Judge Pauline Newman dissented. In part, the court in Apple I held that a global settlement between Apple and Qualcomm on the terms of a license agreement meant that “the validity of any single patent would have no effect on Apple’s ongoing payment obligations,” and that Apple had therefore failed to establish standing under the reasoning of MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, as it asserted. The court in Apple I explained: “Ultimately, Apple’s assertions amount to little more than an expression of its displeasure with a license provision into which it voluntarily entered. Such allegations do not establish Article III standing.”

Following a motion filed in mid-October with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) accusing the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and its management of facilitating the appearance of bias at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) in favor of Apple, Inc., Apple has now filed its opposition to that motion. Apple contends there is no precedent for allowing the motion, as it requests to supplement the record with documents that were not part of the trial record; that the TTAB is “an executive adjudicatory body” within the USPTO, which is “an executive agency within the Department of Commerce, and the TTAB’s administrative law judges are not subject to the recusal requirements set out in 28 U.S.C. § 455”; and that the documents Charles Bertini is asking to submit “reflect merely routine and fleeting professional contacts” that “fall far below the threshold of the personal contacts necessary to support disqualification on the basis of bias or prejudice.”

A motion filed on Friday, October 15, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) requests that the appellant, Charles Bertini, be allowed to present evidence not of record in order to demonstrate that bias at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) may have had a negative impact on his case. Bertini owns the mark APPLE JAZZ, which was registered in New York state in 1991 for entertainment services. He began using the mark well before that, in 1985. Unaware that he did not have a federal registration, Bertini filed an opposition against Apple, Inc.’s federal registration for “Apple Music” in 2016, along with an application to register APPLE JAZZ with the USPTO.

Two recent court decisions in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively, have considered (i) the disclosure obligation pursuant to Clause 4.1 of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy, and (ii) the impact this has on the enforceability of a patent subject to the Policy…. Both decisions were in the ongoing patent and fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) related litigations between Optis and Apple. In summary, the decisions confirmed that neither Optis nor its predecessors had breached their duty to disclose IPR to ETSI under clause 4.1, nor did the timing of their disclosures constitute egregious misconduct, so as to result in an implied waiver under U.S. law, or in the case of the UK, a proprietary estoppel, preventing or restricting enforcement of the patent.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights held a hearing yesterday titled “Big Data, Big Questions: Implications for Competition and Consumers,” in which both Republican and Democratic senators pushed representatives of Facebook and Google to answer difficult questions about their platforms’ impact on everything from competitive marketplaces to teenagers’ body image. The hearing is one in a series that aims to conduct a bipartisan review of America’s competition issues, according to Subcommittee Chair, Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

On Thursday, August 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Universal Secure Registry LLC v. Apple Inc. in which the appellate court affirmed the District of Delaware’s grant of a motion to dismiss Universal Secure Registry’s (USR) patent infringement allegations. In a decision that will be discouraging to some, though unsurprising, the Federal Circuit okayed the district court’s invalidation of all asserted claims from USR’s four patents-in-suit, finding that each patent was properly gunned down after being placed on the firing line of Section 101 subject matter ineligibility. The opinion was authored by Judge Stoll.

In recent days, both Google and Apple have lost big patent cases. On August 13, Apple lost a $300 million jury verdict to PanOptis. Also on August 13, Google was found to infringe five Sonos patents at the International Trade Commission (ITC) in an initial determination by Judge Charles E. Bullock, which, if upheld by the full Commission, would block the importation of Google hardware, including Chromecast and Pixels. This likely means that Apple, Google and their big tech allies will use these instances, as well as other recent high-profile patent losses, as evidence of the need for yet more innovation-crippling patent reform. That would be a huge mistake for America at a time when we find ourselves locked in a race for technological supremacy with the Chinese.

On August 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s denial of Apple’s motion to dismiss in Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple, Inc. The majority, with Judge Linn writing, determined that the University of Michigan’s (UM’s) bylaws did not effectuate a present automatic assignment of patent rights from one of its faculty members…. The CAFC concluded that paragraph 1 of Bylaw 3.10 does not unambiguously constitute either a present automatic assignment or a promise to assign in the future and is instead best read as a “statement of intended disposition and a promise of a potential future assignment . . .”

In late June, medical technology firm Masimo Corporation and its consumer device subsidiary Cercacor Laboratories filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) asking the agency to institute a Section 337 investigation into several versions of the Apple Watch. Masimo’s allegations, which also include trade secret litigation ongoing in U.S. district court, follow an increasingly familiar narrative in which a Big Tech player, in this case Apple, engages in licensing negotiations with a small tech developer, only to poach employees and ideas from the smaller firm without paying the original developers.

On June 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s grant of a motion to dismiss for Apple and Samsung in a patent infringement action brought by Yanbin Yu and Zhongxuan Zhang (collectively, “Yu”). Yu alleged infringement of Claims 1, 2, and 4 of U.S. Patent No. 6,611,289 (the ‘289 patent), titled “Digital Cameras Using Multiple Sensors with Multiple Lenses,” and the court dismissed due to ineligibility under Section 101. Judge Pauline Newman dissented.

On May 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB/ Board) in an inter partes review (IPR), holding the PTAB properly construed the claim language.

In April 2018, Apple Inc. filed a petition for IPR, alleging that all 25 claims of U.S. Patent No.  8,539,552 (“the ‘552 patent”) owned by Uniloc 2017 LLC were unpatentable. Apple Inc. v. Uniloc 2017 LLC, No. IPR2018-00884, Petition at 1 (P.T.A.B.). During the IPR, the PTAB held claims 1-17 and 23-25 of the ‘552 invalid for obviousness in view of U.S. Patent No. 6,324,279 (“Kalmanek”). Uniloc then appealed the decision. On appeal, Uniloc argued that the Board’s decision to invalidate the claims of the ‘552 patent resulted from an erroneous construction of a claim term. In its cross-appeal, Apple argued that the PTAB erred in holding that Apple failed to show the remaining claims of the ‘552 patent, claims 18-22, would have been obvious in view of Kalmanek. The CAFC upheld the PTAB on all issues.