Last week the Federal Circuit reversed the decision by  Judge Gilstrap of E.D. Texas to proceed with litigation, rather than stay the litigation pending the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) review of the asserted patents under the Transitional Program for Covered Business Method Patents (“CBM”).  This is the first time the Federal Circuit

Last Thursday, December 5, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3309 (“the Innovation Act”), a patent reform bill generally directed to perceived patent litigation abuse by certain patent assertion entities (what some call “patent trolls”).  Prior draft versions of the House bill had gone through several revisions in the past few months (see our September

Late yesterday, Administrative Law Judge Robert K. Rogers issued an order denying the motion brought by Huawei and ZTE (later joined by Nokia) to stay ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-868 pending the outcome of a potential FRAND determination in the District of Delaware.  As we noted in our initial post on this motion, this is not altogether surprising, given the ITC’s statutory mandate to decide cases quickly.  So it looks like InterDigital’s latest standard-essential ITC case will stick with the procedural schedule on a path to a December 2013 hearing.  Huawei and ZTE’s quest to avoid a potential exclusion order, meanwhile, will shift to the Delaware district court, where they recently told the court that it could enjoin InterDigital from enforcing any ITC exclusion order on its SEPs until FRAND issues are resolved.

The order itself is confidential, but the screenshot below shows
Continue Reading ALJ denies motion to stay InterDigital ITC case pending potential FRAND determination

Yesterday we covered InterDigital’s opposition to Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE’s efforts to stay the ITC’s investigation into InterDigital’s latest Section 337 complaint pending a potential FRAND determination in the District of Delaware.  We also noted that the other respondent, Samsung, did not join the motion but stated that it did not oppose such a stay.    The ITC Investigative Staff from the Office on Unfair Important Investigations (a third party that participates in many ITC investigations as a representative of the public interest) also filed its own response to the motion yesterday.  The Staff opposes the motion to stay for a variety of reasons, which we will get into below.
Continue Reading ITC Staff opposes motion to stay pending FRAND determination in InterDigital Section 337 investigation (337-TA-868)

ITC LogoYesterday, InterDigital filed its opposition to Huawei & ZTE’s motion (later joined by another respondent, Nokia) to stay Inv. No. 337-TA-868, which is the ITC’s investigation into InterDigital’s 3G/4G standard-essential patent infringement-based Section 337 complaint.  Much as it did in its prior opposition to Huawei/ZTE’s attempts to seek an expedited FRAND determination in Delaware district court, InterDigital here claims that nothing in the motion to stay counsels staying the investigation pending a determination of FRAND terms in Delaware — in fact, InterDigital attached its opposition to expedite the Delaware proceedings as an exhibit to its ITC stay opposition.  After the jump, we’ll provide a brief summary of InterDigital’s arguments against staying the ITC case.

InterDigital wasn’t the only one filing papers in this case yesterday, though — Samsung also filed a response to the motion to stay.  Samsung’s position is, succinctly, that “[w]hile Samsung does not join the Motion, Samsung does not oppose the requested stay.” (You may recall that Samsung has its own motion to terminate some of InterDigital’s infringement claims pending in this case).Continue Reading InterDigital opposes Huawei/Nokia/ZTE’s efforts to stay ITC investigation, saying motion is “based on speculation upon speculation”

Earlier this week we noted that Huawei and ZTE have asked the ITC to stay its investigation into InterDigital’s complaint of 3G/4G standard-essential patent infringement.  This was done in part because Huawei and ZTE have requested that the District Court of Delaware to expedite a determination of a FRAND rate for InterDigital’s patents.  Yesterday, InterDigital filed virtually identical opposition briefs in both cases (Opp. to Huawei / Opp. to ZTE), in which it urged the court to deny the motions — arguing that it is improper for Huawei and ZTE “to seek a purely hypothetical and advisory opinion in the form of an expedited ‘FRAND rate’ determination” while still maintaining an ability to refuse to pay in the event the patents are later found invalid or non-essential/not infringed.  This is an interesting issue surrounding FRAND licensing that has been the topic of much debate lately.
Continue Reading InterDigital calls Huawei/ZTE’s requests for expedited FRAND determinations “impractical” and “improper”

On Friday we posted about the Answers filed by the respondents in In the Matter Certain Wireless Devices with 3G and/or 4G Capabilities and Components Thereof (Inv. No. 337-TA-868) — the case better known as InterDigital’s ITC action against Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE.  And we’ve previously discussed how Huawei and ZTE are currently seeking an expedited determination of FRAND terms in Delaware district court, where they also expalined that they would seek to stay the ITC action.  Today, Huawei and ZTE’s motion to stay the ITC investigation hit the docket (it was actually filed on Friday).  Huawei and ZTE seek to halt the ITC investigation pending (1) the outcome of Inv. No. 337-TA-800 (involving the same parties and some of the same patents); and (2) a determination in Delaware of the terms of a FRAND license to InterDigital’s patents.
Continue Reading Huawei, ZTE seek stay of InterDigital 3G/4G ITC investigation