Non-Practicing Entities

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About a month ago, Administrative Law Judge David Shaw issued a Notice of Initial Determination in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-800, concluding that InterDigital failed to prove that Respondents Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE infringed any valid patent claims that InterDigital asserted as essential to 3G cellular standards (several claims of one patent were found infringed, but…

Yesterday, Administrative Law Judge David P. Shaw issued a Notice of Initial Determination in In the Matter of Certain Audiovisual Components and Products Containing Same (No. 337-TA-837), an ITC Section 337 investigation based on an infringement complaint brought by LSI and Agere against Funai, Realtek, and Mediatek (who had previously settled out of the case).  …

Back in January, we alerted you to a patent infringement case brought in the U.S. International Trade Commission by Acacia Research subsidiary Adaptix.  Adaptix accused Ericsson of infringing U.S. Pat. No. 6,870,808, which Adaptix asserted to be essential to the ETSI 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless standard.  The ITC later instituted the investigation as…

This past Friday, Judge Richard Andrews of the District Court of Delaware held a hearing on InterDigital’s motions to dismiss several FRAND-related counterclaims in three district court cases InterDigital brought against Huawei, ZTE, and Nokia over 4G-essential patents.  For a brief refresher on the issues raised in InterDigital’s motions to dismiss — which have been…

A couple weeks ago, we posted about an interesting pretrial damages ruling in a patent infringement case (actually, several cases) brought by non-practicing entity Wi-LAN against a number of standards-compliant device makers (Sony, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and HTC).  But yesterday, an Eastern District of Texas jury decided that the damages issue was irrelevant, finding that all…

Over the past few years, courts have begun cracking down on improper damages theories.  The Federal Circuit’s 2012 opinion in LaserDynamics v. Quanta is instructive on this point, noting that in the absence of evidence that the patented functionality is the source of the demand for the entire product, then damages must be based on…

On Friday, U.S. International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge David P. Shaw issued a Notice of Initial Determination in In the Matter of Certain Wireless Devices with 3G Capabilities and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-800.  This investigation was originally instituted nearly two years ago based on a complaint filed by InterDigital against Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, and LG, in which InterDigital accused the companies of infringing several InterDigital patents alleged to be essential to various 3G cellular communications standards.  The evidentiary hearing was held in January 2013, and the case involves the intersection of a two issues that have drawn a lot of attention lately — the assertion of standard-essential patents at the ITC (and what if any relevance FRAND licensing obligations have to the proceedings), as well as patent infringement cases brought by non-practicing entities (InterDigital is an NPE that has been deemed a “patent troll” by some, while others take a more favorable view of the company’s activities).

So far, it appears that InterDigital’s SEP infringement assertions have failed (at least for now).  While the public version of ALJ Shaw’s Initial Determination won’t become available for at least a few weeks, Friday’s Notice indicates that ALJ Shaw found no violations of Section 337 with respect to any of the seven remaining asserted patents. 
Continue Reading ITC rules against InterDigital’s claims of 3G-essential patent infringement in preliminary finding

Back in 2011, Intellectual Ventures fired off a patent infringement complaint against Motorola Mobility in the District of Delaware.  That case is scheduled to go to trial early in 2014  But today, Intellectual Ventures upped the ante, announcing that it has filed a second patent infringement complaint against Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility, choosing this time…

Earlier this week, we provided an update on the multitude of WiFi-related infringement lawsuits brought by non-practicing entity Innovative Wireless Solutions LLC against various hotels and restaurants in Texas, noting that IWS had dismissed these suits (albeit without prejudice).  We had discussed that this was a decidedly “un-Innovatio-like” turn in the cases — but yesterday brought a development that makes this series of disputes much more like the ones in the Northern District of Illinois involving Innovatio:  Cisco Systems Inc., a supplier of WiFi equipment for many of the hotels accused of infringement, got involved.  And Just like it did with Innovatio, Cisco here filed a declaratory judgment action against IWS, seeking declarations of invalidity and non-infringement as to IWS’s three asserted patents.

[UPDATE] In addition to Cisco, Hewlett-Packard has also filed a declaratory judgment action against IWS.  The link is below, and more details on that complaint are at the bottom of this post — including information about a potential license defense. [/UPDATE]

[SECOND UPDATE] On Friday, June 14, Ruckus Wireless, another WiFi equipment supplier, also filed a declaratory judgment complaint against IWS.  This complaint is very similar to the one filed by Cisco. [/SECOND UPDATE]

[Cisco Systems Inc v Innovative Wireless Solutions LLC Complaint]

[Hewlett-Packard-Company v. Innovative-Wireless-Solutions-LLC Complaint]

[Ruckus Wireless v. Innovative Wireless Solutions Complaint]

Cisco’s complaint, filed in the Western District of Texas (where Rackspace has chosen to take on noted NPE Parallel Iron in another DJ action), includes some particularly harsh words for IWS —
Continue Reading WiFi equipment suppliers Cisco and HP step in and file declaratory judgment actions against Innovative Wireless Solutions LLC

In late April we shared with you the litigation activities of Innovative Wireless Solutions LLC, a non-practicing entity that filed 40+ lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas against a variety of hotels, hotel chains, and restaurants/coffee shops/delis.  IWS asserted that by providing wireless interest service to their customers, these defendants infringed three patents…