The Source for Standard-Essential & Other Patent Litigation Issues
This past Wednesday, the Blu-ray patent pool One-Blue, LLC and several of its licensors (Philips, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Sony) filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Delaware district court, accusing Imation Corp. of infringing several patents that are either essential or related to the Blu-ray Disc Assocation’s (BDA) Blu-ray standards.
[One-Blue v Imation Complaint]Continue Reading Patent pool One-Blue and several licensors file suit against Imation over Blu-ray patents
Earlier this week, we discussed N.D. Cal. Judge Ronald Whyte’s order granting partial summary judgment and issuing a preliminary injunction in a Realtek v. LSI district court case. As we explained in our post, while the district court found that LSI had breached its contractual RAND obligations by filing an ITC complaint without first making…
A couple months ago, Microsoft asked Judge James L. Robart to confirm that the second phase of the Microsoft-Motorola RAND breach of contract trial — in which the actual breach and damages issues will be addressed — would be tried to Judge Robart himself, and not a jury (a motion that Motorola opposed). Microsoft…
A few months ago, we took note of a dispute in the Southern District of New York between two foreign makers of Universal Serial Bus (USB) products — Lotes and Hon Hai/Foxconn. You can read our prior post for more background on the dispute, but in summary, Lotes accused Foxconn of reneging on licensing commitments…
As many of you are aware, a non-practicing entity named Innovatio IP Ventures has been engaged in a widespread licensing and litigation campaign over WiFi-related patents that were formerly owned by Broadcom. As a result, Innovatio has become embroiled in litigation with several suppliers of WiFi-compliant devices (Cisco, Motorola Solutions, Netgear) in the Northern District of Illinois. A few weeks ago, we noted that a debate had arisen in that case over the “essentiality” of certain asserted patents. The presiding judge ordered briefing on the issue, and Innovatio filed its “Essentiality Brief” a couple weeks ago — asserting that not all of its asserted claims were essential or covered by IEEE RAND obligations. This past Friday, the WiFi Suppliers filed their response to Innovatio’s Essentiality Brief. The WiFi Suppliers accuse Innovatio of misconstruing both the IEEE Patent Policy and the relevant RAND licensing Letters of Assurance in an attempt to avoid its RAND obligations.
[2013.05.10 Defendants’ Brief re Essentiality of Patent Claims]
We alluded in our last post on this matter that issues of patent “essentiality” — and therefore, the scope of corresponding RAND obligations — are likely to become a more common issue in standard-essential patent litigation. The WiFi Suppliers’ responsive brief demonstrates why.Continue Reading Scope of IEEE RAND obligations a hotly-contested issue in Innovatio IP Ventures WiFi patent litigation
If all of these InterDigital-related FRAND issues seem hard to keep track of, they are — InterDigital is currently suing Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE all in a single ITC action (337-TA-868) and in separate parallel actions in Delaware (as well as some of the same parties in a different ITC case, 337-TA-800…
Yesterday Entropic Communications, a designer and maker of semiconductors and “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) technology, filed a patent infringement action against fellow SoC maker ViXS Systems in district court in the Southern District of California. Entropic alleges that ViXS infringes two patents that are essential to the home entertainment networking standards developed and promulgated by the Multimedia Over Coax Alliance, also known as the MoCA family of standards or MoCa specifications (MoCA is a trade group, not a recognized SSO or SDO, so some do not like to refer to the MoCA specifications as “standards”). The MoCA specifications have been widely adopted and are marketed as “the universal standards for home entertainment networking,” allowing users to stream high-definition content at high speeds throughout a house using their existing coax network (e.g., for use in multi-room DVRs, gaming, etc.).
[Entropic v. ViXS Complaint]Continue Reading Entropic files patent infringement complaint against ViXS Systems over MoCA-essential home entertainment networking patents
In a post yesterday, we discussed Nokia’s amicus brief submitted “in support of neither party” in the Apple-Motorola FRAND Federal Circuit appeal (Judge Posner edition). The amicus brief recently filed by BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) is now public, and it is very similar to Nokia’s — at least when it comes to the issue of the availability of injunctive relief. While not expressly supporting Motorola, BlackBerry echoes Motorola’s (as well as Nokia’s) argument that injunction relief should not be categorically precluded for FRAND-encumbered standard-essential patents.
[2013.05.07 BlackBerry Amicus Brief]
Coincidentally, BlackBerry also now finds itself on the receiving end of a new patent infringement complaint from Canadian non-practicing entity Wi-LAN, which is based on BlackBerry’s alleged infringement of a patent that Wi-LAN claims is essential to the ETSI 3GPP Long-Term Evolution (LTE) telecommunications standard.
FRAND issues are being hashed out in a lot of jurisdictions right now. Microsoft and Motorola are warring in Washington state, Apple and Motorola are fighting at the Federal Circuit, and Apple and Samsung are awaiting the International Trade Commission’s upcoming ruling later this month. Noted non-practicing entity InterDigital, meanwhile, has been trying…
Many district courts around the country have specialized local rules that govern patent litigation, in order to assist the court and the parties to manage the myriad issues that come up in the vast majority of complex patent cases. Local patent rules often control the schedule and format for the parties’ infringement and invalidity contentions, claim construction proceedings, etc. The Northern District of California, where France Telecom and Marvell are embroiled in a patent suit over Marvell’s alleged infringement of a digital coding patent, is one such district that uses local patent rules. In a ruling handed down this past Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Cousins found that it was proper for France Telecom to rely on two ETSI 3G cellular standards in formulating its infringement contentions. This ruling shows that — with some caveats — it is permissible to use an industry standard as a basis for infringement contentions in districts with local patent rules.
[2013.05.013 (D.E. 79) Granting Motion to Compel in Part]Continue Reading Infringement contentions based on industry standards sufficient to comply with N.D. Cal. local patent rules (France Telecom v. Marvell)
