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Judge Gilstrap recently ruled that  certain challenges to a damages expert’s testimony  went toward the weight a jury could give that testimony, rather than whether the testimony should be admitted.  Specific FRAND-related portions of the testimony that he would admit at trial include the following:

  • Expert could testify that the hypothetical FRAND royalty rate to be awarded for infringement damages (which presumes the patents are valid and infringed) would be higher than the royalty rate of a comparable FRAND license, which comparable license’s royalty rate may have been skewed low based on discounts made for litigation risks and costs.
  • Expert could testify about FRAND royalties that the accused infringer charges for its own SEPs.
  • Expert could testify about licenses negotiated in the context of German litigation and threat of injunction.

Judge Gilstrap indicated that the expert had sufficiently identified what he relied on and explained adjustments that he made to those proposed comparable licenses to account for differences from the hypothetical negotiated license.  The defendant’s challenges to that testimony goes to the weight the jury should give the testimony, not its admissibility.

Judge Gilstrap’s ruling is an interesting example of how FRAND litigation has matured since taking the main stage in Judge Robart’s first-of-its-kind FRAND royalty decision in Microsoft v. Motorola (see our May 1, 2013 post) and Judge Holderman’s following decision in In re Innovatio (see our Oct. 3, 2013 post).  Both of those 2013 decisions were based on, inter alia, a general failure of litigants to present sufficiently comparable licenses.  Since then, Federal Circuit decisions have leaned toward admitting comparable licenses where expert testimony sufficiently accounts for differences from the hypothetical negotiated license.

For example, the Federal Circuit’s 2014 Virnetx decision (a non-SEP case) counseled that, although “alleging loose or vague comparability … does not suffice,” a jury may consider comparable licenses where differences from the hypothetically negotiated license are explained to them (see our Sep. 17, 2014 post).  And the Federal Circuit’s 2015 Ericsson decision (an SEP FRAND case) stressed that, although real world licenses “are almost never perfectly analogous to the infringement action,” the jury may consider them if expert testimony accounts for “distinguishing facts when invoking them to value the patented invention.” (see our Dec. 5, 2015 post).  Litigants following the Federal Circuit’s guidance may find courts more willing to allow expert testimony on proposed comparable licenses despite their differences from the hypothetical negotiated license.…

Continue Reading Judge Gilstrap permits damages expert testimony that litigated FRAND royalty should be higher than comparable license’s FRAND royalty that was skewed low by litigation risk discount (St Lawrence v. ZTE)

Magistrate Judge Payne recently ruled against prospective licensee T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss patent owner Huawei’s Declaratory Judgment Complaint that seeks a declaration that Huawei  complied with its FRAND commitments to ETSI regarding LTE standard-essential patents during Huawei’s license negotiations with T-Mobile.  Judge Payne did not rule whether or not Huawei had complied with its licensing negotiations; rather, he simply indicated that there was sufficient controversy between the parties and concern that T-Mobile might bring a breach of contract action against Huawei that the court could exercise declaratory judgment subject-matter jurisdiction to resolve the FRAND-compliance dispute.  This is a procedural ruling that is subject to review by the presiding district court judge, Judge Gilstrap.

This decision is interesting because it supports a way for patent owners with large SEP portfolios to resolve FRAND or other licensing disputes in a single action and, thereby, avoid complex and expensive patent infringement litigations on a patent-by-patent basis.  But the devil is in the details and we will await further developments as the case proceeds.
Continue Reading Judge Payne rules patent owner may bring case seeking a declaration that it has not breached FRAND commitments (Huawei v. T-Mobile)

Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins recently denied Apple’s equitable defense that sought to hold a Core Wireless standard essential patent unenforceable because the prior patent owner Nokia allegedly failed to timely disclose to the ETSI standards body a pending patent application.  Judge Cousins also entered Final Judgment based on the jury’s recent verdict that awarded a $7.3 million lump sum reasonable royalty for Apple’s infringement of two SEPs (see our Dec. 15, 2016 post on the verdict).  This case provides incremental insight into litigating issues concerning a patentee’s alleged failure to disclose intellectual property rights to a standards body, at least with respect to the equitable theories of implied waiver and equitable estoppel.

In this case, the alleged failure to disclose related to a pending U.S. patent application that claimed priority to a Finnish patent application that was filed by the patent owner and pending while the standard was being developed.  The U.S. patent application did not issue as the patent-in-suit until several years after the standard was adopted.  Within a month or so of the patent’s issue, the patent owner disclosed the patent to the standards body, which was deemed to be “shortly after [the patentee] could point to the contours of its IPR with specificity because the claims were allowed.”

This did not give rise to an inference that the patent owner was relinquishing its patent rights as required to establish implied waiver.  And Apple, who did not create or sell its adjudged infringing products until many years later, did not show that it had relied on Nokia’s failure to disclose or was prejudiced by it, as required to establish equitable estoppel.
Continue Reading Court denies Apple’s equitable defense that was premised on failure to disclose patent applications to a standards body (Core Wireless v. Apple)

Today, a Northern District of California jury in a trial before Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins entered a Verdict finding that Apple infringed two patents alleged essential to ETSI and 3GPP cellular standards, that the patents were not invalid and awarding a reasonable royalty in the amount of $3.4 Million and $3.9 Million for each patent, respectively, as single lump sum payments for past and future infringement.  It is not clear from the public record how the jury reached this damages verdict or whether it favors more the patent owner Core Wireless or the adjudged infringer Apple.  We may follow-up this post if more insight is provided by post-trial briefings or the trial transcripts become public.

Below is a discussion of some of the pre-trial rulings and jury instructions that would have shaped the jury’s reasonable royalty determination here.  These rulings touch-on the issues of royalty stacking, the smallest salable patent practicing unit, the form of a reasonable royalty, relevant Georgia-Pacific factors and apportionment to the value of the patented technology.
Continue Reading Jury awards Core Wireless $7.3 Million lump sum for Apple’s infringement of two SEPs (Core Wireless v. Apple)

Judge Gilstrap recently entered Final Judgment that included a 20% enhancement of damages based on a Jury Verdict that LG willfully infringed two patents that patent owner Core Wireless alleged to be essential to certain cellular standards.  This appears to be the first case of a court enhancing damages based on willful infringement of a standard essential patent.  Recall that Judge Gilstrap previously denied LG’s pre-trial motion to preclude finding willful infringement of an alleged standard essential patent, but indicated that he might consider LG’s policy arguments if he were to consider enhancing damages if the jury found that LG willfully infringed the patents (see our Sep. 7, 2016 post).

Judge Gilstrap has now ruled that he will enhance damages following the jury verdict that LG willfully infringed the patent, and he did so sua sponte, meaning that he enhanced damages without the patent owner filing a post-trial motion seeking such enhancement or the parties briefing same.  Judge Gilstrap has since stayed execution of the judgment while the parties file post-trial motions, which motions most likely will address the issue of willful infringement and enhanced damages.

Judge Gilstrap’s decision to enhance damages  was due to LG’s negotiation conduct and apparently weak infringement/validity defenses, which led him to conclude that “LG’s decision to terminate negotiations and continue operations without a license was driven by its resistance to being the first in the industry to take a license, and not by the merits or strength of its non-infringement and invalidity defenses.”…
Continue Reading Judge Gilstrap enhances damages for willful infringement of SEPs (Core Wireless v. LG)

At the same time that Judge Gilstrap recently entered his bench trial ruling that rejected Metaswitch’s standards-based equitable defenses (see our Oct. 2, 2016 post), he also entered an Order that rejected Metaswitch’s request to set aside a jury’s verdict that it infringed valid patent claims based on, among other things, SEP-related grounds.  The ruling is interesting mainly due to the procedural issues it raises.  Judge Gilstrap did make a substantive ruling that the CableLabs, IETF and ITU-T intellectual property rights (IPR) agreements at issue applied on a patent claim-by-claim basis and not on a patent-by-patent basis (i.e., some claims in a patent may be subject to the IPR agreement, but other claims within that same patent may not).
Continue Reading Judge Gilstrap rejects SEP-based arguments to set aside jury infringement and damages verdict (Genband v. Metaswitch)

Judge Gilstrap recently entered an Order that rejected various defenses raised by Metaswitch based on the prior patent owner’s (Nortel) activities in standards organizations CableLabs, the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) and the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”).  The decision highlights the importance of considering the specific language of the standard setting intellectual property rights (“IPR”) policy and patent owner commitment at issue as well as the importance of showing that the standard incorporates the patented technology and is implemented in the accused infringing products.

For example, under the wording of the specific CableLabs IPR Agreement at issue, Judge Gilstrap ruled that (1) an entities’ commitment only applied to intellectual property (e.g., patents or applications) it owned at the time the entity made the commitment and did not apply to intellectual property that the entity later acquired and (2) a subsidiary’s intellectual property commitment did not obligate its parent entity.  Thus, although one of Nortel’s subsidiary’s that owned no patents participated in the CableLabs standards process, Nortel could hold (and later sell) patents relevant to the CableLabs standard without those Nortel patents being subject to the royalty-free licensing obligation that CableLab’s otherwise required of participants.

Further, Judge Gilstrap ruled that the accused infringer failed to show one or more material parts of the alleged standard setting obligation, such as showing that (i) the standard setting document at issue was actually an adopted standard subject to an obligation (e.g., not an expired draft or request for comment), (ii) the patented technology was incorporated into the standard (e.g., the patent claims actually are “essential” to the standard), and (iii) the accused products actually implement the standard and patented technology.  The latter requirement — e.g., show that the accused products implement the patented technology within the standard — can be particularly problematic, because accused infringer’s generally deny infringement (usually a first line of defense) and are reluctant to undermine that defense by arguing that the claims read onto their product in order to support a lower priority defense, such as the standard essential patent defenses raised here.

The decision also provides incremental insight into common equitable defenses raised in standard essential patent cases: laches, equitable estoppel, implied waiver, and implied license.  In this case, the circumstances that lead to a failure to establish breach of an expressed standard setting commitment also doomed the equitable defenses as well.  Perhaps this is not too surprising, because equity generally does not step-in when there is an adequate remedy at law–e.g., enforcement of a contractual obligation that sets the rights, obligations and expectations of the parties.  This further bolsters the importance of the language used in the specific standard setting IPR policy and specific patent owner commitment at issue when determining rights and obligations under standard essential patents subject to a standard setting obligation.
Continue Reading Judge Gilstrap rejects Metaswitch’s SEP defenses based on Nortel participation in CableLabs, IETF and ITU standards bodies (Genband v. Metaswitch)

Judge Gilstrap recently denied accused infringer LG’s motion for summary judgment that alleged standard essential patents (“SEPs”) were not willfully infringed, letting that issue go to the jury;  if the jury finds willful infringement, then the court may decide whether and to what extent to enhance damages based on such willful infringement.  An important procedural point is that Judge Gilstrap did not rule that there was willful infringement in this case; rather, under the permissive summary judgment standard, he ruled that there was sufficient evidence to let the jury decide the issue.  He did rule as a matter of law, however, that there is no special rule for SEPs that precludes finding willful infringement or enhancing damages, and  he left the door open to consider policy arguments about SEPs subject to FRAND commitments when exercising discretion whether to enhance damages.
Continue Reading Judge Gilstrap rules that damages can be enhanced if SEPs subject to a FRAND commitment are willfully infringed (Core Wirless v. LG)

Judge Payne recently denied  defendant LG’s motion to exclude damages expert testimony on alleged standard essential patents (SEPs) where LG challenged the experts opinion (1) because he did not start with a royalty-rate that is then adjusted  by applying Georgia-Pacific factors and (2) because he failed to apportion value to the patented feature given his reliance on the end product price.  The patents-in-suit are alleged to be essential to the GSM, UMTS/HSPA and LTE cellular standards, but the parties disagreed whether the patents are SEPs and other patents-in-suit are not alleged to be SEPs.

The decision sheds some incremental insight on the entire market value rule (EMVR) that concerns when one can use the end product as the royalty base.  The court considered it a rule of evidence for U.S. jury trials to avoid jury confusion and found that the expert properly considered the end product price to assess profitability of the accused device, but otherwise did not rely on the end product as a royalty base.  He ruled that the expert may rely on that end product price in his analysis, but he cannot “publish” (i.e., disclose) that end product price to the jury given the EMVR’s “important evidentiary principle” that “care must be taken to avoid misleading the jury by placing undue emphasis on the value of the entire product” and concern that “diclosure of the end product’s total revenue cannot help but skew the damages horizon for the jury, regardless of the contribution of the patented component to this revenue.”…
Continue Reading Judge Payne applies “important evidentiary principle” to preclude telling jury about end product price (Core Wireless v. LG)

Judge Payne recently denied a request to proceed with all of the parties’ alleged FRAND-obligated standard essential patents in the same case, disappointing counterclaimants who had wanted to resolve together the single controversy over each of the parties’ standard essential patents.  Huawei brought suit asserting patents alleged to be essential to 3GPP LTE standards and subject to a FRAND obligation.  Nokia filed a counterclaim against Huawei on patents that also were alleged to be essential to 3GPP LTE standards and subject to a FRAND obligation.  Judge Payne decided that it would be more efficient to proceed with the Huawei and Nokia patents in their own separate cases, rather than together.
Continue Reading Judge Payne severs each parties’ SEPs into separate cases (Huawei v. Nokia)