Posts Tagged: "patent infringement"

According to Honeywell’s press release, the company is seeking to recover damages caused by the sale of infringing barcode readers marketed by Code, such as the Code Reader 2600. Honeywell is also seeking to prevent Code’s use of the technology in future barcode readers. “We welcome competition, but we have zero tolerance for those who infringe our intellectual property,” said Lisa London, president of the productivity products division at Honeywell, in the press release. “Protecting patents is critical to ensuring a level playing field for all market players… Fair competition means protecting the patent rights of others.”

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Akamai V broadened the circumstances in which the actions of others may be attributed to a single actor to support liability for direct infringement. Here, a patent that claims a method of administering treatment can be directly infringed if a physician performs some of the claimed steps and the patient performs the other steps under the physician’s direction and control. The infringement is induced by the drug manufacturer when it unambiguously encourages the performance of the infringing steps, as in its labeling for the drug.

Perhaps when the Senate Banking Committee convenes to consider the nomination of Wall Street attorney Jay Clayton as the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission they should ask about efficient infringement and the infringe at will culture. What is your position, Mr. Clayton, on the legal obligation of a public company to shareholders? Should publicly traded companies inform shareholders that patent assets are worthless, or at least worth less, given the legal and regulatory climate in America? Should publicly traded companies systematically infringe and ignore all patent rights? Should publicly traded companies be using billions in shareholder monies to aggressively collect patent assets while they are simultaneously using millions to lobby against the viability of patents? What exactly do shareholders have a right to know?

On January 5, 2017, the District of Delaware issued its long-awaited decision in the patent dispute pending between Amgen and Regeneron wherein the Court granted Amgen’s request for a permanent injunction against Regeneron’s new PCSK9-inhibitor cholesterol drug. Both Amgen and Regeneron each independently spent billions of dollars over the past decade-plus developing a new class of cholesterol drug. The drug itself comprises an antibody that binds to PCSK9 proteins… Whereas Regeneron managed to be the first to market, Amgen succeeded in getting to the Patent Office first. Amgen originally sued Regeneron, along with Sanofi, its European partner, in October 2014. Amgen asserted three patents directed to antibodies that bind to PCSK9. Over the next month, Amgen commenced additional lawsuits as new patents issued from the Patent Office. The cases were eventually consolidated, but Amgen eventually went to trial against Regeneron on only two of the originally asserted patents.

On December 15th, Japanese electronics conglomerate Sony Corp. filed a patent infringement lawsuit in U.S. district court against Japanese photography and imaging company Fujifilm. At the center of Sony’s legal action are magnetic tape products marketed by Fujifilm which allegedly practice technology copied from Sony without a license. In the official complaint filed by Sony, the company asserts a series of four patents, which it alleges Fujifilm of infringing through the sale of the company’s Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format magnetic tapes, specifically generation four, five and six LTO tapes (LTO-4, LTO-5, LTO-6).

The equitable defense of laches has been a useful tool for defendants in intellectual property litigation for over a hundred years, but a recent case in the U.S. Supreme Court could potentially remove the defense in patent infringement cases. In SCA Hygiene Products AB v. First Quality Baby Products LLC, the Supreme Court must decide whether the doctrine of laches bars patent infringement claims filed within the six-year statutory limitation period established under 35 U.S.C. § 286 of the Patent Act… Based on oral arguments, it is expected the Court will reverse the Federal Circuit’s decision and conclude that laches do not apply to patent infringement cases brought within the six-year damages period.

A patent and copyright squabble involving two players in the networking space for information technology (IT) development, which has ramped up in recent years, saw an interesting round of events play out in federal court and regulatory agencies this past December. At the center of the brouhaha is American networking and telecommunications giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) of San Jose, CA, which has filed multiple legal actions against Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) of Santa Clara, CA, alleging that Arista has moved into the networking equipment market using technologies developed and patented by Cisco, specifically through former Cisco employees who founded Arista.

Being targeted by PAEs is nothing new for Apple — but in an anti-trust complaint dated December 20, 2016, Apple finally said enough was enough. Pulling no punches, Apple accused the PAEs of “conspiring with Nokia in a scheme to diffuse and abuse [standard essential patents] and, as the PAEs and Nokia fully intended, monetize those false promises by extracting exorbitant non-FRAND royalties in way Nokia could not”. Using PAEs for direct attacks against Apple would be a smart, albeit sneaky, strategy for Nokia. Since PAEs do not themselves sell any products, there would be little risk of a countersuit from Apple – as well as a general lack of commitment to FRAND licensing terms that spell lower royalties.

On Thursday, December 15th, a subsidiary of Kenilworth, NJ-based pharmaceutical developer Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK) was awarded $2.54 in royalty damages in a case involving one of the most popular available treatments for combating the hepatitis C virus (HCV). A federal jury decided that Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD), an American biotech firm headquartered in Foster City, CA, owed these royalties as a result of its infringement of patents for HCV treatments held by Merck’s Cambridge, MA-based subsidiary Idenix Pharmaceuticals. According to coverage of the verdict by Bloomberg, this $2.54 billion royalties award is the largest verdict for patent infringement in the history of the United States. The case was decided by jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (D. Del.).

The Court held that remand was improper. Generally, remand is proper where the governing legal standards change during appeal. However, the Court found that the change in legal standard would not affect the district court’s order because Medgraph failed to present a case of direct infringement even under the broader theory of attribution in Akamai V.

It is a ubiquitous concept that U.S. IP rights cannot extend beyond the territorial borders of the U.S. But the IP world may be in for a change. If the Supreme Court upholds the Federal Circuits decision in Life Technologies Corporation, et al. v. Promega Corporation (No. 14–1538) currently pending before the Supreme Court, it will change the way companies engage in domestic and international business. The Supreme Court is specifically set to consider if supplying a component to a foreign manufacturer of a patented product creates liability under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(1).

Almost 100% of the pre-election patent reform lobbying efforts were focused on the campaign, which did not prevail and thus on the morning of November 9 the patent community woke up to being well behind in getting a rapport established with the incoming administration. Don’t be fooled by the seductive image of a drained swamp, those of us in the pro-patent community will need to be pro-active in our engagement with Washington if we want patent reforms that meet our expectations.

A district court does not have authority to issue an injunction against a party not adjudicated to be liable for infringement in the underlying case unless that party aided or abetted the liable party in the infringement, or the non-liable party is legally identified with the liable party through privity or some other means. This determination requires specific findings of fact about the parties.

This case concerns ongoing disputes between Power Integrations and Fairchild Semiconductors. The companies sued each other in Delaware, each asserting infringement of multiple patents by the other. At issue were power supply controller chips used ubiquitously in modern electronics, the patents related to those chips, and how power is supplied and regulated from the upstream source to the downstream electronic device… Induced infringement requires successful communication between the alleged inducer and the third-party infringer; it is not sufficient in itself that others directly infringed the asserted claims.

In an indefiniteness analysis, particularly for a “means plus function” claim, the patent must particularly disclose the corresponding structure for performing the claimed function. It is not enough that a person of ordinary skill in the art would likely know what structure to implement. The Court also clarifies that in a willful infringement analysis, the preponderance of the evidence standard implemented in Halo should be used, rather than the clear and convincing evidence standard used in Seagate.