Last month, Judge James F. Holderman dismissed various claims brought by Cisco, Motorola Solutions, and NETGEAR against Innovatio IP Ventures, LLC over Innovatio’s vast licensing and litigation campaign relating to the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard. These suppliers claimed that Innovatio — in threatening the suppliers’ customers and bringing litigation over standard-essential patents — violated various unfair competition laws, and even the Federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”). But the court found that Innovatio’s conduct was protected petitioning activity under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, and that the suppliers did not properly plead that the conduct was a “sham” that would exempt this activity from protection. Yesterday, the suppliers filed a motion for entry of final judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), which indicates that the suppliers want to appeal the dismissal of these claims as soon as possible to keep the heat on Innovatio.
Continue Reading Wi-Fi suppliers seek to facilitate quick appeal of dismissal of RICO, unfair competition claims against Innovatio
Delaware district court denies motion to expedite FRAND determination in InterDigital case
Last week, we posted about ALJ Robert K. Rogers’ decision to deny the motion brought by Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE to stay InterDigital’s latest standard-essential patent ITC case (Inv. No. 337-TA-868) pending a FRAND determination in district court. On Thursday March 14, these parties’ efforts to seek an expedited FRAND determination took another blow. Judge Richard G. Andrews of the District Court of Delaware denied a motion brought by Huawei and ZTE to expedite discovery and trial on FRAND-related counterclaims.
Continue Reading Delaware district court denies motion to expedite FRAND determination in InterDigital case
ALJ denies motion to stay InterDigital ITC case pending potential FRAND determination
Late yesterday, Administrative Law Judge Robert K. Rogers issued an order denying the motion brought by Huawei and ZTE (later joined by Nokia) to stay ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-868 pending the outcome of a potential FRAND determination in the District of Delaware. As we noted in our initial post on this motion, this is not altogether surprising, given the ITC’s statutory mandate to decide cases quickly. So it looks like InterDigital’s latest standard-essential ITC case will stick with the procedural schedule on a path to a December 2013 hearing. Huawei and ZTE’s quest to avoid a potential exclusion order, meanwhile, will shift to the Delaware district court, where they recently told the court that it could enjoin InterDigital from enforcing any ITC exclusion order on its SEPs until FRAND issues are resolved.
The order itself is confidential, but the screenshot below shows
Continue Reading ALJ denies motion to stay InterDigital ITC case pending potential FRAND determination
Huawei, ZTE claim that without FRAND determination, InterDigital will “perpetuate an endless cycle of ITC litigation” over standard-essential patents
Yesterday, Huawei and ZTE filed a joint reply brief in support of their respective motions to expedite determination of the terms of a FRAND license for InterDigital’s standard-essential patents. The parties reiterate their willingness to take a FRAND license to InterDigital’s patents and assert that a prompt resolution of FRAND issues will moot other issues and litigation and will prevent Huawei/ZTE from facing irreparable harm.
Continue Reading Huawei, ZTE claim that without FRAND determination, InterDigital will “perpetuate an endless cycle of ITC litigation” over standard-essential patents
ITC Staff opposes motion to stay pending FRAND determination in InterDigital Section 337 investigation (337-TA-868)
Yesterday we covered InterDigital’s opposition to Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE’s efforts to stay the ITC’s investigation into InterDigital’s latest Section 337 complaint pending a potential FRAND determination in the District of Delaware. We also noted that the other respondent, Samsung, did not join the motion but stated that it did not oppose such a stay. The ITC Investigative Staff from the Office on Unfair Important Investigations (a third party that participates in many ITC investigations as a representative of the public interest) also filed its own response to the motion yesterday. The Staff opposes the motion to stay for a variety of reasons, which we will get into below.
Continue Reading ITC Staff opposes motion to stay pending FRAND determination in InterDigital Section 337 investigation (337-TA-868)
InterDigital opposes Huawei/Nokia/ZTE’s efforts to stay ITC investigation, saying motion is “based on speculation upon speculation”
Yesterday, InterDigital filed its opposition to Huawei & ZTE’s motion (later joined by another respondent, Nokia) to stay Inv. No. 337-TA-868, which is the ITC’s investigation into InterDigital’s 3G/4G standard-essential patent infringement-based Section 337 complaint. Much as it did in its prior opposition to Huawei/ZTE’s attempts to seek an expedited FRAND determination in Delaware district court, InterDigital here claims that nothing in the motion to stay counsels staying the investigation pending a determination of FRAND terms in Delaware — in fact, InterDigital attached its opposition to expedite the Delaware proceedings as an exhibit to its ITC stay opposition. After the jump, we’ll provide a brief summary of InterDigital’s arguments against staying the ITC case.
InterDigital wasn’t the only one filing papers in this case yesterday, though — Samsung also filed a response to the motion to stay. Samsung’s position is, succinctly, that “[w]hile Samsung does not join the Motion, Samsung does not oppose the requested stay.” (You may recall that Samsung has its own motion to terminate some of InterDigital’s infringement claims pending in this case).Continue Reading InterDigital opposes Huawei/Nokia/ZTE’s efforts to stay ITC investigation, saying motion is “based on speculation upon speculation”
The new (and improved?) SHIELD Act
There’s been much ado in the patent community over the past week over the re-introduction of H.R. 845, the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act of 2013 — more commonly known as the SHIELD Act. This legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), seeks to “protect American tech companies from frivolous patent lawsuits that cost jobs and resources” by implementing a “loser pays” fee-shifting paradigm for patent infringement cases brought by certain types of non-practicing entities. (A prior version introduced last year, H.R. 6245, was much more limited in its implementation of fee-shifting.)
While this is a bit off-topic for our blog, we thought this proposed legislation is sufficiently important to our readers that we’d do a brief post on it — especially given the penchant by some NPEs to assert standard-essential patents. The legislation (at least as it’s currently drafted) has raised a lot of questions and issues and has generated a lot of commentary (both pro and con) from the business and legal communities. After the jump, we’ll run through a quick summary of the provisions of the SHIELD Act, some first impressions about questions it may raise, and provide some links to a variety of others’ views on the proposed law.Continue Reading The new (and improved?) SHIELD Act
InterDigital calls Huawei/ZTE’s requests for expedited FRAND determinations “impractical” and “improper”
Earlier this week we noted that Huawei and ZTE have asked the ITC to stay its investigation into InterDigital’s complaint of 3G/4G standard-essential patent infringement. This was done in part because Huawei and ZTE have requested that the District Court of Delaware to expedite a determination of a FRAND rate for InterDigital’s patents. Yesterday, InterDigital filed virtually identical opposition briefs in both cases (Opp. to Huawei / Opp. to ZTE), in which it urged the court to deny the motions — arguing that it is improper for Huawei and ZTE “to seek a purely hypothetical and advisory opinion in the form of an expedited ‘FRAND rate’ determination” while still maintaining an ability to refuse to pay in the event the patents are later found invalid or non-essential/not infringed. This is an interesting issue surrounding FRAND licensing that has been the topic of much debate lately.
Continue Reading InterDigital calls Huawei/ZTE’s requests for expedited FRAND determinations “impractical” and “improper”
RANDomness – Reps. DeFazio, Chaffetz reintroduce SHIELD Act
In a press conference held today, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced an updated version of the SHIELD (Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes) Act. The aim of this legislation is to decrease the amount of frivolous NPE patent litigation by increasing financial burdens on NPEs. More on this legislation
ITC institutes investigation into Acacia subsidiary Adaptix’s 4G-essential complaint against Ericsson (337-TA-871)
Yesterday the U.S. International Trade Commission announced that it has instituted a Section 337 investigation titled Certain Wireless Communications Base Stations and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-871. This investigation is based on a complaint filed on January 24, 2013 by Adaptix, Inc. (a subsidiary of noted publicly-traded non-practicing entity Acacia Research) against Ericsson. The