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On New Year’s Eve, Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker of the W.D. Wis. ruled that a patent pool’s demand letter listing hundreds of standard-essential-patents was not enough for the patent owner to provide its recipients with actual notice of alleged acts of patent infringement under the patent statute.  Ruling on Defendants’ Motion for JMOL regarding pre-suit…

Yesterday patent monetization entity MPHJ filed a Complaint in W.D. Tex. against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for threatening an enforcement action against MPHJ premised on MPHJ’s extensive letter campaign to accumulate license fees on its scanner patents by threatening small end-users with litigation that MPHJ allegedly did not actually intend to pursue.  We…

The parties and amicus have now finished briefing in the appeal from Judge Crabb’s ruling that dismissed Apple’s action seeking a declaration of a FRAND royalty because Apple would not agree to be bound by that ruling.  This post summarizes the parties most recent filings.

First, recall that last summer we posted about Apple’s opening…

Today, the Second Circuit will hear argument in an important case on the extent that foreign injury (reduced foreign sales and closure of foreign plants) arising from foreign RAND breaches can have remedy in the U.S. based on their impact on U.S. commerce.  The case, Lotes Co., Ltd. V. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.…

Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Limelight v. Akamai to review the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision that induced infringement under Section 271(b) involving multiple actors — e.g., internet service provider performing some steps of a patent claim and end-customers doing final step — does not require establishing direct infringement under Section 271(a).

The…

Yesterday Judge Stark followed an approach used by Judge Holdeman in the Innovatio WiFi case by bifurcating FRAND issues from liability where essentiality and a RAND royalty rate will be tried first in hopes the result will spur settlement, followed by discovery and trial on liability issues if still necessary.  Recall that this case arose…

On December 30, 2013, InterDigital and Huawei filed a stipulation to dismiss the pending Delaware district court action (13-cv-00008) without prejudice, indicating the parties entered into a “binding settlement agreement and agreement to arbitrate”.  The Court promptly dismissed the case.

Yesterday, InterDigital and Huawei similarly moved to terminate the corresponding ITC action, Inv. No.…

Since Judge Holderman’s September 27, 2013 order setting a RAND rate in the sprawling Innovatio WiFi litigation (see our October 3 post), two of the five major device manufacturers involved in the case have settled-out.  Motorola settled with Innovatio after a November 22nd settlement conference and was dismissed on December 17th.  Less than a…

Recall that Rockstar started asserting patents it acquired from Nortel by filing a lawsuit in E.D. Tex. on Halloween against Google and certain Android handset manufacturers (see our Nov. post that also summarizes Rockstar’s acquisition of Nortel’s patents).  On Christmas Eve, Google responded by filing a Complaint in N.D. Cal. seeking a declaratory judgment…

On Dec. 19, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Huawei, Nokia and ZTE did not infringe any valid Interdigital alleged 3G patents and, therefore, did not rule on RAND or public interest issues in that investigation (discussed in our prior post).  The ITC is reserving those issues for consideration in due course…