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Today the Federal Circuit (Lourie, Dyk and Reyna) granted Microsoft’s motion to transfer Motorola’s appeal of Judge Robart’s RAND ruling to the Ninth Circuit, settling the parties dispute whether the Federal Circuit or Ninth Circuit has appellate jurisdiction over this particular appeal (see our Dec. 16, 2013 post and prior posts summarizing transfer…

Earlier this week, the U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC”) issued its public opinion in an investigation where the respondent Carsem raised standard-setting obligation defenses by alleging that a patent asserted by Amkor covered a standard set by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Counsel (“JEDEC”).  The ITC rejected Carsem’s FRAND-related equitable and legal estoppel defenses as…

Yesterday, the European Commission issued decisions in two antitrust proceedings centered around the enforcement of standard essential patents (SEPs). The decisions, one involving Samsung and the other Motorola, essentially create a “safe harbour” for willing licensees of FRAND-encumbered SEPs to avoid an injunction and address the circumstances under which an SEP holder may seek injunctive…

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two opinions (Octane Fitness and Highmark) that create a more flexible, deferential standard for determining what constitutes an “exceptional” patent case in which a district court has discretion to award reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party.  The Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s rigid test that required…

Today the Federal Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in the appeal from Judge Posner’s ruling that denied both Motorola and Apple damages and injunctive relief in Apple v. Motorola.  Among other things, the Federal Circuit ruled that there is no per se rule that prohibits a party from seeking injunctive relief on a standard essential…

With standard-essential-patent (SEP) damages discussions frequently focused on how to calculate a RAND rate, one can sometimes forget that not all SEPs are subject to [F]RAND obligations, which raises the issue whether and to what extent a reasonable royalty rate would be different between RAND and non-RAND encumbered patents. Last week, N.D. Cal. Judge Lucy…

As the Senate continues to weigh patent reform measures focused on improving preliminary disclosures in patent litigation, courts continue to distinguish between sufficient and insufficient disclosures under their own patent local rules. According to a recent ruling from the Northern District of California, a generalized claim that any products practicing a technical standard infringe an…

Yesterday, a Florida jury returned a verdict that BlackBerry did not infringe NXP’s patents alleged to be essential to the IEEE 802.11 WiFi and JEDEC eMMC standards and that the asserted patent claims were invalid.  The role of BlackBerry’s standard essential patent defenses is not clear from the record, though it appears to have been…

Today, in Teva Pharmaceuticals v. Sandoz, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petition seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s de novo standard of review of a district court’s claim construction ruling.  Teva phrased the question presented as follows:

QUESTION PRESENTED
Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that in matters

…

The ITC has now released the public version of its decision to terminate the LSI-Realtek investigation without addressing RAND issues, which we discussed in our March 5, 2014 post.  The public version does not provide any more insight into the decision not to address the standard essential patent RAND issues beyond it being moot…