Posts Tagged: "patent infringement"

The Federal Circuit affirmed a jury award of $7.5 million for Sprint’s infringement of three Comcast patents. The district court did not error in construing the challenged claims, there was sufficient evidence to support both the jury’s verdict and the award of prejudgment interest.

The facts of the underlying case were incredibly simplistic and not representative of a typical patent infringement case involving complex technologies. The parties agreed that the exported product consisted of one of five total “components of the patented invention,” so the Court did not address “how identify the ‘components’ of a patent or whether and how that inquiry relates to the elements of a patent claim.” Id. at FN2. Addressing the issue in a case with minimal real-world applicability does little to help the finder of fact determine whether a product contains one or multiple components of a patented invention. The decision in Promega does not relieve manufacturers from the risk that their single-part product could be used inadvertently to infringe a U.S. Patent overseas. When disputes arise under § 271(f), defendants will need to build strong evidence showing that their product only contains one component to avoid infringement, while plaintiffs will be crafting arguments that the total number of patented components is low and the exported product contains multiple components.

The CBM determination includes patents that are “financial in nature” according to the claims; not patents that are “complementary” or “incidental” to financial activity according to the specification or post-grant assertion of the patent… Further, the Board’s reliance on post-grant activity, that Secure Axcess alleged infringement against financial institutions, was improper. “Those choices do not necessarily define a patent as a CBM patent, nor even necessarily illuminate an understanding of the invention as claimed.”

Reliance on expert declarations is not per se deficient because the declaration utilizes a legal turn-of-phrase, i.e. “It would have been obvious.” The declaration is sufficient, and reliance is not an error if the declaration incorporates factual determinations that support its legal conclusions….Strava sought Inter Partes Reexamination of several claims of a patent owned by Icon. During reexamination, the Examiner rejected all pending claims as obvious. Icon appealed the Examiner’s findings and the Board affirmed. Icon appealed to the Court and challenged the Board’s reliance on Strava’s expert declarations as improper and its decision as lacking substantial evidence.

Perhaps not your typical or average patent, the ‘443 patent has some 135 patent claims, which relate to a proximity authorization unit, a proximity service unit, a method of using the proximity authorization unit, or a system for implementing the proximity authorization unit. The majority of the claims, however, are drafted specifically to cover the devices (i.e., the proximity authorization and service units)… This is not the first time that Disney’s MagicBand wireless communication products have been the target of patent infringement litigation. In April 2015, radio frequency system developer InCom Corporation of Sutter, CA, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (C.D. Cal.) alleging that Disney’s MagicBands infringed upon InCom patents covering audience tracking system technologies. Last August, the two companies agreed to settle the case after InCom had alleged that Disney sold about 10 million MagicBands at $12.95 each after being notified of the potential infringement.

In yet another reversal of the Federal Circuit, the Supreme Court yesterday held that liability under § 271(f)(1) of the Patent Act requires more than one component part of a multicomponent patented invention to be shipped abroad for assembly, no matter how important or critical that one component may be. Life Techs. Corp. v. Promega Corp.,(U.S. Feb. 22, 2017) 580 U.S. ___, slip opinion at *8 (No. 14-1538)… Writing for the Court, Justice Sotomayor rejected the case-specific approach of the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court analyzed the ambiguous term “substantial” in the full context of the statute. Based on this context approach, the Court reasoned that “substantial” is best understood in a purely quantitative sense, as opposed to the qualitative importance of the component approach championed by Promega.

The PTAB agreed with Apple and invalidated the patent. The Federal Circuit remanded because the Board failed to adequately explain its finding that a skilled artisan would have had a motivation to combine the references used to find obviousness… IPR practitioners should brief the Board with explicit reasoning why a skilled artisan not only could (or could not), but would (or would not) be motivated to combine the asserted references, and how those references work together (or do not).

A preliminary injunction was appropriate when non-infringement depended on an erroneous claim construction; the evidence did not show the proposed combination of references for non-obviousness was enabled; irreparable harm was likely despite other competition, and the injunction tipped in favor of the public interest… The Court held that the fact that other infringers may be in the marketplace does not negate irreparable harm. It also held that the loss by Scag of customers may have far-reaching, long-term impact on its future revenues, and the sales lost by Scag are difficult to quantify due to “ecosystem effects,” where one company’s customers will continue to buy that company’s products and recommend them to others.

Non-practicing entities are especially likely to be subject to personal jurisdiction because the nature of their business involves asserting and litigating patent rights in foreign courts. This is especially true if the non-practicing entity has had other litigations in the state… Papst is a non-practicing entity engaged in the business of acquiring and asserting patent rights incorporated under the laws of Germany and having its principal place of business there. In October 2012, Papst acquired the patents-in-suit and investigated Xilinx, a Delaware corporation with headquarters in San Jose, California. Papst sent two patent-infringement notice letters to Xilinx in 2014 encouraging Xilinx to take a patent license. Three representatives from Papst traveled to California in October 2014 to meet with Xilinx to discuss Papst’s infringement allegations and Xilinx’s potential licensing.

In a patent suit targeting Chrome web browsers, Google was hit with a $20 million jury verdict for infringing patents covering malware protection software… Google was hit with a jury verdict for $20 million in damages awarded to one inventor and the family members of a deceased co-inventor for the infringement of three reissue patents covering malware protection software. The infringement suit targeted Google’s Chrome web browsers for laptops and mobile platforms as well as the sale of Google’s hardware products having that software pre-installed. The case was decided in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.).

On the menu this week for Other Barks & Bites… Video game systems developed by Nintendo and Sony are targeted in a patent infringement suit filed in Delaware federal court. The infamous scan-to-email patent giving rise to the patent troll debate has finally been invalidated at the Federal Circuit. A multi-billion dollar copyright suits between two American tech giants gets new life from Oracle. California’s state legislature moves to create trademark protections for marijuana products at the state level, circumventing federal restrictions on such trademarks. And Zillow gets hit with a copyright infringement verdict.

Once the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta declined to take a license, Bozeman informed them that he believed they were infringing on his two patents… The complaint sets forth two claims for relief: one for declaratory judgment of non-infringement of the 6,754,640 patent, and the other for declaratory judgment of non-infringement of the 8,768,840. The complaint alleges that the Federal Reserve Banks do not infringe multiple elements of independent claims set forth in both patents and seeks a judicial declaration indicating as much, along with costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees.

At the center of each lawsuit is the assertion of a single patent covering personal data collection technology integrated into a series of smartwatches. The patent-in-suit asserted by Sportsbrain against each of these defendants is U.S. Patent No. 7,454,002, titled Integrating Personal Data Capturing Functionality into a Portable Computing Device and a Wireless Communication Device and issued to Sportbrain in November 2008… Each of the suits filed by Sportsbrain identifies a specific product and companion apps which work in tandem to collect personal data and provide feedback to wearers.

In 2016, the ITC had its busiest year since 2011–which was the peak of the “smartphone wars”–in terms of new investigations instituted. In 2016, 55 complaints were filed, notably, 16 of these complaints were filed by foreign companies. The ITC had an above average settlement rate of 60%; normally the settlement rate is approximately 50%. Last year also had a slight growth in nonpatent investigations which includes antitrust, trade secret, copyright and Lanham Act violations. Despite the increased workload, the average target date was 15.8 months from institution date to final Commission opinion.

The Federal Circuit, while deciding a preliminary injunction was properly granted, addressed the PTAB decision in its oral arguments and in its decision. In oral arguments Judge Moore stated, “You have to be able to say substantially, ‘cause there’s a million patents that use the word substantially.” And in their written decision the Federal Circuit explained: “We find it difficult to believe that a person with an associate’s degree in a science or engineering discipline who had read the specification and relevant prosecution history would be unable to determine with reasonable certainty when a water balloon is “substantially filled.”