Posts Tagged: "Patent Litigation"

On June 12 and 13, 2023, the German giant textile company, Oerlikon Textile G.M.B.H. & CO. K.G. (Oerlikon), filed two applications with the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC’s) Milan Local Division to preserve evidence against two Indian companies accused of infringing the (Italian portion) of the European patent EP214848B1, which covers a “False twist texturing machine”. The defendants, Himson Engineering Private Limited (“Himson”), and Bhagat Group, were exhibiting two machines at a trade fair, bearing the trade names Machine 2 and Machine 2-TS, along with a machine bearing the trade name, Bhagat Textile Engineers.

In addition to unrecoverable issues like divided infringement, it’s no secret that patents have come under increased scrutiny over the last decade. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continues to invalidate patent claims at an alarming rate, defendants have ever-increasing invalidity and non-infringement arguments to make in district court, and the Supreme Court’s Alice decision on patent eligibility continues to baffle the entire patent community…. While the patent community debates the need for reform, an easy and attainable solution, and one that is within your control, is simply to strengthen the patents before they issue.

Following years of infringement litigation over its patented wireless chip technologies, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has recently enjoyed a pair of settlement outcomes pointing to the strength of the research university’s patent holdings. The accused technologies in those cases overlap with other Caltech patent suits currently pending, which could presage further settlements recognizing the value of the university’s R&D activities.

Your company (or your client’s company) is an American company. All your offices and employees are here in the United States, likely in the same location. You assemble your products or devices here. You purchase all the parts and components that you don’t make yourself from other American companies, probably by calling or emailing their American salespeople that you have a longtime relationship with. And you sell your products to other American companies. Surely your company thus cannot be sued for patent infringement in the International Trade Commission (ITC), whose mission is to “investigate and make determinations in proceedings involving imports claimed to injure a domestic industry or violate U.S. intellectual property rights.” Not so fast.

Why does the patent venue statute shield accused infringers from patent litigations in states where they have registered to do business as foreign corporations?  Isn’t that part of the quid pro-quo of doing business in the district?  The general venue statute does not provide such a shield; so why provide it in patent cases?  Maybe the time has come to kill the patent venue statute entirely because without it, patent cases would fall under the general venue statute and be treated like other corporate litigations.

The recently-concluded term of the U.S. Supreme Court featured four intellectual property decisions: one patent case, two trademark cases, and one copyright case. Three of the four opinions were unanimous, citing fundamental and time-honored precedents for support. The only dissent involved a copyright dispute centering on Andy Warhol’s use of a third-party photograph of Prince in his work. That case resulted in a highly charged debate between Justices Sotomayor and Kagan as to whether Warhol’s copying constituted transformative fair use.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a ruling in Shamoon v. Resideo Technologies, Inc. affirming a final written decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that invalidated patent claims covering a communication system for accessing geographically remote locations. While the decision was nonprecedential, the Federal Circuit also struck down constitutional challenges to the PTAB proceedings raised by the pro se inventor and patent owner.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) held in a precedential decision today that an inter partes review (IPR) petitioner must be given the opportunity to present evidence of anticipation or obviousness under a new claim construction when that construction is first proposed by a patent owner in its response following the institution decision. The court ultimately vacated the decisions and remanded to the PTAB to reconsider.

Texas has long been home to the busiest patent courts in the country. In the Eastern District, Judges Rodney Gilstrap and Roy Payne have for the last decade-plus seen more patent cases than any other judges in the country. Since taking the bench in 2018, Judge Alan Albright in the Western District has had the most active patent docket, taking 18% of all patent cases in 2022, for example. Much has been written about the judges’ perceived unwillingness to grant transfer motions in patent cases (and resulting challenges to the Federal Circuit) and disfavor of staying cases pending inter partes review. These factors suggest that a defendant in these courts have few options to stay or transfer their case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a district court’s dismissal of Realtime Data, LLC’s patent infringement claims based on invalidity of the asserted claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In a previous ruling, the CAFC sent the case back to the district court asking for a more fleshed out Section 101 analysis. Judge Pauline Newman dissented to today’s judgment, calling current eligibility jurisprudence a “morass” and saying she would have remanded the case for determination of validity under Section 112, or possibly Sections 102 and 103.

On July 7, 2023, Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot issued a Notice of Initial Determination in favor of computer and graphics processor maker AMD. See In the Matter of Certain Graphics Systems, Components Thereof, and Digital Televisions Containing the Same (No. 337-TA-1318). This puts AMD one step closer to preventing TCL and Realtek from importing smart TVs and components containing infringing graphics processors in its patent infringement case at the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Freedom-to-operate (FTO) means the ability and confidence to use, make, or sell a product or process without fear of infringing the intellectual property (IP) rights of others. An FTO analysis identifies and evaluates patent infringement risks (and potentially other types of intellectual property) and provides valuable information for research and technology commercialization. Many companies conduct an internal FTO analysis for the development of a new product or process, redesign of an existing operating unit, or change of manufacturing process or raw materials. Some may choose to conduct an FTO analysis only when the commercialization of a product is likely to generate a threshold amount of profit. This decision may depend on the budget, the likelihood of litigation, and the potential revenue generated by the sales of the new product or service.

Patent eligibility challenges under 35 U.S.C. § 101 have been effective tools at the pleading stage for parties defending allegations of patent infringement. Defendants often attempt to avoid the costs of litigation by filing a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (“FRCP”) 12(b)(6), seeking to invalidate the asserted patent(s) on the grounds that the claims are directed to ineligible subject matter — such as an “abstract idea.” Previously, a key tactic for plaintiffs to overcome such “Section 101 motions” was by amending the complaint and annexing an expert declaration. Recently, however, this strategy has been called into question due to a recent decision in Marble VOIP Partners LLC v. Zoom Video Communications, Inc.,

On July 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in SNIPR Technologies Limited v. Rockefeller University reversing a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that invalidated all claims from five SNIPR patents. In reversing, the Federal Circuit found that the PTAB erroneously subjected SNIPR’s patents to interference proceedings that Congress meant to eliminate when it enacted the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011.

In a precedential decision authored by Judge Tiffany Cunningham on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled that two patents for methods of connecting users based on their answers to polling questions were directed to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. U.S. Patent Nos. 9,087,321 and 10,936,685 are owned by Trinity Info Media, LLC and are titled “Poll-Based Networking System.” The U.S. District court for the Central District of California granted Covalent, Inc.’s motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), finding that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of “matching users who gave corresponding answers to a question” and did not contain an inventive concept.