Posts Tagged: "Patent Litigation"

In patent litigation, damages issues are sometimes treated as an afterthought when compared to the issues of infringement and invalidity. However, achieving a client’s goals requires an attorney to place damages at the center of the litigation strategy from the very beginning. Damages, quite simply, can make or break a case. And it is a quickly evolving field, rife with inconsistent judicial decisions, vague standards, and new techniques for measuring damages. Below are some of the current hot topics in patent litigation—and tips for practitioners on both sides of the “v” on how to handle them.

It was a slow week for new patent filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in the district courts. This week saw only 18 new filings at the PTAB—one of which was a Post Grant Review, while the remaining were inter partes reviews (IPRs). Texas Instruments, Inc. continued challenging Greenthread LLC patents, filing four IPRs against  four patents (bringing the total number of IPRs Texas Instruments has filed up to seven). Amazon filed two IPRs against one Nokia Technologies Oy [associated with Nokia Corporation] patents; Apple filed five IPRs against three Resonant Systems Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) patents; and Micron filed two IPRs against two Yangtze memory Technologies Company Ltd.

In a precedential decision issued Friday by Judge Leonard Stark, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a district court’s judgment that Luv n’ care, Ltd. and Nouri E. Hakim (LNC) succeeded in proving Lindsey Laurain and Eazy-PZ, LLC (EZPZ) were barred from relief due to unclean hands but vacated the court’s judgment for EZPZ of no inequitable conduct. The CAFC also vacated a grant of partial summary judgment of invalidity and vacated orders denying LNC attorney fees and costs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday affirmed an International Trade Commission (ITC) final determination that said Google infringed five of Sonos, Inc.’s patents but which also found three proposed redesigns did not infringe. Sonos owns U.S. Patent Nos. 10,439,896 (“’896 patent”), 9,195,258 (“’258 patent”), 9,219,959 (“’959 patent”), 10,209,953 (“’953 patent”), and 8,588,949 (“’949 patent”). Sonos filed a complaint with the ITC alleging certain Google audio players and controllers infringed the patents and the ITC agreed, issuing a limited exclusion order and a cease-and-desist order (CDO) preventing Google from marketing the infringing products in the United States.

“Many believe the root cause of the patent system’s dysfunction is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office [USPTO] is issuing too many invalid patents that unnecessarily drain consumer welfare, stunt productive research, and unreasonably extract rents from innovators.” That quote from Professors Michael Frakes and Melissa F. Wasserman echoes a common complaint in patent policy conversations. The USPTO is widely perceived as issuing too many bad patents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision decision authored by Judge Reyna today affirming a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion alleging that AI Visualize’s patent claims were ineligible under Section 101. AI Visualize owns U.S. Patent Nos. 8,701,167 (’167 patent), 9,106,609 (’609 patent), 9,438,667 (’667 patent), and 10,930,397 (’397 patent), which all relate to visualization of medical scans. AI Visualize sued Nuance Communications, Inc. and Mach7 Technologies, Inc. for patent infringement. Nuance filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, arguing the claims were directed to patent ineligible subject matter. Since AI Visualize’s Amended Complaint provided no further information about the eligibility of the claims and neither party asked for claim construction, the district court reviewed the eligibility of the claims and concluded they were all ineligible.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday affirmed a number of district court orders against inventor Urvashi Bhagat, whose patent application  was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Bhagat’s U.S. patent application No. 13/877,847 covers orally-delivered nutritional formulations containing omega-6 fatty acids and antioxidants. The application was filed in 2013 and the USPTO examiner rejected all claims as obvious, two claims as lacking written description, several other claims as indefinite and others for improper dependency. On appeal to the PTAB, the Board summarily affirmed the dependency and indefiniteness rejections, affirmed the obviousness rejection on the merits and reversed the written description rejection. Bhagat then appealed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, claiming the USPTO erroneously rejected her patent claims and asking for damages due to the Office’s bad faith and for taking her property.

In a nod to Mark Twain’s famous quote, the rumors of the death of IP Edge are greatly exaggerated. It appears the prolific NPE aggregator has either sold or transferred at least one portfolio (and potentially up to 40) to a new entity, Inferential Capital, LLC, which after hiring, has begun asserting again—more below.  On the stats, it was a slightly below average week at both the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in the district courts. At the PTAB, there were 25 new patent filings, with one post-grant review and 24 inter partes reviews (IPR). 

Did you know that Brazil’s medical device market is experiencing a surge, attracting billions in imports annually? This boom, however, is attracting not only legitimate businesses but also those looking to exploit loopholes. On average, more than US$6.7 billion worth of products are imported annually, with around 14,000 new products being introduced every year. One example is the increase in sales of equipment for endoscopic surgeries, given the rise in the number of bariatric surgeries, which already exceeds 70,000 procedures per year.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in a precedential decision authored by Judge Prost on Monday that certain claims of Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s patent for a schizophrenia drug are not indefinite but vacated and remanded the district court’s finding that Teva Pharmaceuticals had not proven all of the claims obvious.

AlexSam, Inc. lost its patent infringement cases against Simon Property Group/Blackhawk Network and Cigna Corporation in two separate decisions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday, April 1. AlexSam owns U.S. Patent No. 6,000,608, which discloses a “multifunction card system.” Essentially, the invention is a type of gift card that “can serve a number of functions, thus allowing the consumer to have one card which may act as their card for financial transactions, long-distance telephone calls, loyalty information, and medical information.”

After VLSI Technology filed a complaint against Patent Quality Assurance (PQA) and its representative, Joseph Uradnik, in the Circuit Court of the City of Alexandria in late January this year, Uradnik recently filed a Notice of Removal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Alexandria, Alexandria Division, arguing the case should be tried there instead. VLSI’s complaint alleged abuse of the inter partes review (IPR) system and is seeking approximately $3.2 million in legal fees from Uradnik, according to the March Notice of Removal.

On March 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision in Rady v. The Boston Consulting Group affirming a lower court’s invalidation of patent claims covering improvements to physical asset provenance via blockchain. The ruling, though marked non-precedential, arguably expands the application of the abstract idea exception to patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for blockchain technologies even when those patents are claiming the use of specialized, non-generic computer hardware.

In a lengthy, precedential opinion authored by Judge Taranto, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday, March 27, affirmed a district court’s decision invalidating the claims of two of Trading Technologies’ (TT’s) patents as being patent ineligible under Section 101 and also clarified the application of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling on foreign damages. Harris Brumfield, as Trustee for Ascent Trust, is the successor to TT, which sued IBG LLC in 2010 for infringement of four patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,766,304; 6,772,132; 7,676,411; and 7,813,996. All of the patents’ specifications describe “assertedly improved graphical user interfaces for commodity trading and methods for placing trade orders using those interfaces.”