Posts Tagged: "patent infringement"

As a threshold matter, the Court considered whether it had jurisdiction over the writ of mandamus. The Court noted the America Invents Act broadened its jurisdiction to cases including compulsory counterclaims “arising under” patent. Here, the Court found that the patent infringement counterclaims were compulsory because Rearden’s infringement counterclaim shared a critical factual dispute with its claims regarding ownership and rightful use of the technology claimed in the MOVA patents. Therefore, the Court found it did have jurisdiction over the writ of mandamus.

In early October, mobile hardware developer Nite Ize of Boulder, CO, filed a Section 337 patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). The complaint alleges that 32 Chinese respondents, some of which are in Hong Kong’s jurisdiction, and eight U.S. entities are infringing upon patents held by Nite Ize in the field of mobile electronic device holders… The accused products are generally sold through e-commerce website portals like eBay.com, Amazon.com and Wish.com. In at least some cases, the accused products, which are sold by entities other than Nite Ize, are inscribed with the Steelie brand name.

The Federal Circuit recently issued a non-precedential decision in a patent infringement action involving American pop music stars Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and their production companies. The Federal Circuit’s decision vacated an earlier award of attorneys’ fees to Timberlake, Spears and the other defendants based on a finding that the case was exceptional within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. 285. The per curiam decision from the panel made up of Judges Moore, Linn and O’Malley explained that certain of the factors relied upon by the district court to find this case to be exceptional were entitled to no weight under § 285. Thus, the attorneys’ fee order of the district court was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings.

American semiconductor giant Qualcomm has been taking actions in recent months against a Chinese smartphone developer whose stature has been on the rise. In a press release dated October 14th, Qualcomm announced that it had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against Meizu, a portable electronics manufacturer founded in 2003 and headquartered in the Chinese city of Zhuhai. Along with the ITC complaint, Qualcomm also filed a patent infringement action against Meizu in Germany’s Mannheim Regional Court and initiated a infringement-seizure action in France to begin collecting evidence for a potential future patent infringement action in that company.

The Norwegian fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff” was far ahead of its time and the moral of that story has a very relevant, modern application. In short, the story introduces three goats that want to cross a river to eat some luscious grass. To do so, however, the goats must first cross a bridge; under which lives a fearsome troll, who is so territorial that he eats anyone who dares to cross it. By working together, the goats are able to plot against the troll, and ultimately knock him off of the bridge. After knocking the troll off the bridge, the three goats lived happily ever after. So, if these goats can figure out how to get rid of trolls, why can’t sophisticated companies do the same?

The stage is now set for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the future of laches in patent litigation. If the Court closely follows its analysis in the Petrella decision, it is fairly likely that the Court will reverse the Federal Circuit and hold that laches cannot bar claims for damages within the six-year period set forth in § 286. Indeed, given the en banc ruling, it is unlikely that the Court would grant certiorari simply to confirm that Aukerman remains good law. There is also the conspicuous absence of the term “laches” (or any other reference to “equitable” defenses) in the Patent Act. While the Federal Circuit found that the doctrine of laches was implied by the language of § 282, the Supreme Court may not be so willing to entertain the same statutory interpretation.

The Court reasoned that the claims were limited to straightforward steps that a skilled artisan could perform mentally and that the inventors admitted to doing so. The claims, on their face, do not call for computer implementation, and Synopsys did not advance a claim construction requiring a computer. Additionally, complex details in the specification are insufficient to transform broad claims from an abstract idea into patentable subject matter. Given the breadth of the claims, the Court declined to decide if a computer-implemented version of the invention would be patentable under § 101.

Why should the costs of the tortfeasing infringer be relevant in determining whether the extracted value from a settlement is fair? The fact that law firms charge a lot of money to defend patent infringement cases, and don’t particularly have any incentive to settle cases early, somehow translates into certain settlements being for nuisance value without any consideration of whether the settlement is a fair value for the rights trampled upon by the infringer? The FTC has quite a lot of explaining to do, because it seems they picked an arbitrary number that is a function of what attorneys ordinarily charge infringing defendants through discovery. I don’t see how that is a function of the value of the innovation, or how it says anything about the merits of the infringement case, the damages case, or the tactics of the patent owner. In fact, it seems as if the $300,000 figure is completely irrelevant.

The suit filed by MONKEYmedia identified Apple software products as allegedly infringing upon the patents-in-suit… Six years of litigation later and on September 6th, 2016, an order of dismissal was filed in W.D. Tex. indicating that both parties had settled their respective claims for relief filed in the case. A joint stipulation of dismissal filed on September 2nd stated that both parties had stipulated to the dismissal of all claims and counter-claims asserted against each other. This comes about a year after MONKEYmedia had settled similar patent infringement claims against Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), developer of the Blu-ray digital content standard which takes advantage of seamless expansion technologies covered by MONKEYmedia’s patents. “We’re pleased that the litigation has been resolved with each of Apple and Sony,” said Eric Gould Bear, co-founder of MONKEYmedia and a renowned designer of user interface and interaction technologies. “They each make great products, and I believe synergistic relationships are better business than sitting on opposite sides of the court.”

Ashley Keller: “However, when you do infringe a patent, even if it was efficient for you to do so, the upshot should be you have to pay. You have to pay a reasonable royalty associated with that infringement so that the innovator who came up with the innovation can also be compensated for the research and development that they did to generate that innovation in the first place. So efficient infringement existence, in and of itself, is not the concern for me. The concern is it is now legally possible, I think in many circumstances, for someone to not only be an efficient infringer but also to get away with infringing and never paying and that is problematic from a societal perspective because it will dramatically reduce the returns to R&D and society will lose out on the advancement of technology that R&D inevitably produces.”

The U.S. government weighs in on Life Technologies’ side because “the application of U.S. patent law to participation by U.S. exporters in foreign markets also raise issues concerning the competiveness of American companies abroad and the respective roles of the United States and other nations’ patent laws.” The government argues that the Federal Circuit has not given a workable definition to determine when a component is sufficiently important or essential as to be “a substantial portion of the components.” The government also argues that, in legislating § 271(f), Congress’s purpose was to outlaw evasion of a U.S. patent by conduct that tantamount to manufacturing the patented invention in the U.S. for export. The government argues that there is no clear expressed Congressional intent for § 271(f) to reach supplying a single staple article: when the product is made abroad except for such a staple article, Congress left that predominantly foreign conduct to be regulated by foreign law. Finally, the government argues that the presumption against extraterritoriality requires the courts to assume both that “legislators take account of the legitimate interests of other nations” and “foreign conduct is generally the domain of foreign law.”

The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to meet the pleading standards for joint patent infringement, holding that Form 18, from the Appendix to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, does not apply to a claim of joint infringement… Form 18 is not sufficient per se, and pleadings must adhere to the Twombly/Iqbal pleading standard, and must do so for each element of the allegedly infringed patent claim. This is particularly true for pleading joint infringement.

Over the past 25 years, I have patented innovations relating to digital watermarking, content recognition, deep packet inspection, rights management, and related technologies. Today digital watermarking is found on billions of files moving around the Internet every day. This technology protects musicians, artists, writers, and developers from having their work illegally copied. How ironic it is that for the past decade, I have been forced to file many legal challenges to protect my own intellectual property. With the passage of the America Invents Act of 2011, Congress sharply tilted the playing field in favor of large corporations that decide to infringe patents owned by small businesses and inventors like me.

In its upcoming term, the Supreme Court will once again consider the extraterritorial effect of U.S. patent law; specifically, whether “the Federal Circuit erred in holding that supplying a single, commodity component of a multi-component invention from the United States is an infringing act under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(1), exposing the manufacturer to liability for all worldwide sales.” Life Tech. Corp. v. Promega Corp., No. 14-1538. Petitioners (all subsidiaries of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., which I shall collectively call “Life”) urge the Court to hold the statute requires “all or a large percentage closely approximating all” of the components of the invention to have been made in the United States. Though Promega Corporation has yet to respond, the Court should decline Life’s invitation. This does not mean, however, that the decision of the Federal Circuit, Promega Corp. v. Life Tech. Corp., 773 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2014), should be affirmed. Rather, though none of the briefs filed in the case have said so, the Supreme Court should reverse because the single, commodity component at issue cannot, as a matter of law, even under Promega’s interpretation of the statute, comprise a “substantial portion” of the components of the invention.

On the heels of a busy term last year, the stage is set for the Supreme Court to review two more important issues regarding utility patents during the October term. The first issue involves one aspect of the Federal Circuit’s decision in Promega Corp. v. Life Technologies Corp., 773 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2014) — i.e., whether a party who supplies a single, commodity component of a multi-component invention from the United States can be liable for infringement. The second issue arises from SCA Hygiene Prods. Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Prods., LLC, 807 F.3d 1311 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (en banc), to determine whether laches remains a viable defense to patent infringement with respect to pre-litigation damages in certain circumstances.