On March 20, 2018, the public version of Eastern District of Texas Magistrate Judge Roy Payne’s March 7, 2018 order tossing a $75 million jury verdict obtained by Ericsson against TCL Communication was released. Ericsson...more
4/2/2018
/ Ericsson ,
Expert Testimony ,
IP License ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Royalties ,
Patents ,
Royalties ,
Smartphones ,
Standard Essential Patents ,
Willful Infringement
Further to our ongoing coverage of post-TC Heartland patent litigation, in a recent development from the Northern District of Illinois, the court granted counterclaim defendants’ motion to dismiss for improper venue. In Shure...more
Recently, the District of Delaware held that a there was no work-product protection, and no common legal interest protection covering communications and documents shared between a patent owner and a third-party litigation...more
2/26/2018
/ Choice-of-Law ,
Common-Interest Privilege ,
Disclosure ,
Discovery ,
Document Productions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Evidence ,
Jurisdiction ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Patent Ownership ,
Third Party Funding ,
Work-Product Doctrine ,
Written Agreements
In Drop Stop LLC v. Jian Qing Zhu et al, 2-16-cv-07916 (CACD January 22, 2018), the Central District of California granted Plaintiff’s motion to award attorney fees due to Defendants’ exceptional litigation tactics under 35...more
In an interesting order issued recently in BroadSign International, LLC v. T-Rex Property AB, Judge Swain of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the Plaintiff’s declaratory judgment of...more
In a recent development from the Eastern District of Texas, Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne concluded that defendants Globalfoundries, Qualcomm, and Samsung waited too long prior to moving to dismiss or transfer the case due to...more
Further to our ongoing coverage of the post-TC Heartland patent litigation landscape, a pair of recent and interesting cases from Texas and Delaware further evolved this important venue-related jurisprudence....more
We first covered the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in Oil States Energy Servs., LLC v. Greene’s Energy Grp., LLC, 137 S. Ct. 2239 (2017), a case with the potential to substantially alter the patent litigation landscape,...more
12/8/2017
/ Administrative Proceedings ,
Article III ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Oil States Energy Services v Greene's Energy Group ,
Oral Argument ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Private Property ,
Public Property ,
SCOTUS ,
USPTO
In June, we covered the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in Oil States Energy Servs., LLC v. Greene’s Energy Grp., LLC, 137 S. Ct. 2239 (2017). The Court will decide whether inter partes review – an adversarial process...more
On November 15, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit resolved a split among district courts on the question whether the United States Supreme Court’s TC Heartland decision constituted a change in...more
11/17/2017
/ Corporate Counsel ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Remand ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
TC Heartland LLC v Kraft Foods ,
Transfer of Venue ,
Venue ,
Waivers
In an interesting development in the post-TC Heartland world, it appears that the Federal Circuit will soon answer the question whether the Supreme Court’s venue decision was a change in the law, or merely a course-correction...more
In Vecco Instruments Inc. v. SGL Carbon, LLC, No. 17-CV-2217 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 2, 2017), Judge Pamela Chen in the Eastern District of New York recently granted Vecco’s motion for a preliminary injunction enjoining SGL Carbon....more
Following a lengthy and extensive litigation that began in 2011 that culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in December of 2016, smartphone industry titans Apple and Samsung will again find themselves in Federal District...more
Last month, following a jury verdict in federal district court in Delaware awarding Plaintiff Idenix Pharmaceuticals LLC $2.54 billion in damages—“the largest damages verdict ever returned in a patent [infringement]...more
The United States Supreme Court decided earlier this year that a 1957 opinion is still valid and still limits venue choices for patent infringement actions under 28 U.S.C. § 1400. See TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group...more
After an eight-year battle through the Federal Courts, the fight over attorneys’ fees in Octane Fitness v. ICON Health & Fitness has likely reached its end with the Federal Circuit upholding the hotly disputed $1.6 million...more
9/19/2017
/ Appeals ,
Attorney's Fees ,
Determination on Remand ,
Exceptional Case ,
Octane Fitness v. ICON ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Reaffirmation ,
Remand ,
SCOTUS ,
Totality of Circumstances Test
In a move that could drastically change the patent law landscape, the United States Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Oil States Energy Services LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC, No. 16-712, to answer the question...more
6/24/2017
/ Administrative Proceedings ,
America Invents Act ,
Appeals ,
Article III ,
CAFC ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Covered Business Method Proceedings ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Oil States Energy Services v Greene's Energy Group ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patents ,
Post-Grant Review ,
Private Property ,
Public Property ,
Right to a Jury ,
SCOTUS ,
Separation of Powers ,
Seventh Amendment ,
USPTO
A flurry of activity from various courts this past week on “exceptional cases” under Section 285 of the Patent Act provided notable guidance for practitioners and patent owners, with a particular emphasis on the motivation...more
6/14/2017
/ Appeals ,
Attorney's Fees ,
Exceptional Case ,
Frivolous Lawsuits ,
Octane Fitness v. ICON ,
Patent Act ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Remand ,
Reversal ,
Section 285 ,
Totality of Circumstances Test ,
Willful Infringement
In keeping with recent erosion of patent rights, patent owners’ power to control the post-sale use and sale of their patented products was severely limited this week by the U.S. Supreme Court in the highly anticipated case...more
6/1/2017
/ Breach of Contract ,
Exports ,
Foreign Sales ,
Imports ,
Impression Products v Lexmark International ,
IP License ,
Patent Exhaustion ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Resales Agreements ,
SCOTUS ,
Single-Use/No Resale Restriction ,
Stream of Commerce
In its opinion in Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., the Federal Circuit expanded the scope of prosecution disclaimer to statements made by a patent owner during Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings. The Court explained...more
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the highly anticipated case regarding the patent exhaustion doctrine, Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Impression Prods., Inc., No. 15-1189...more
For the first time in 26 years, the FTC and DOJ (the “Agencies”) have issued proposed updates to the Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property, last revised in 1995. The intervening quarter century...more
On August 22, 2016, Administrative Law Judge David Shaw of the International Trade Commission (“ITC” or “Commission”) issued his final initial determination (“the ID”) in Certain Portable Electronic Devices and Components...more
A recent decision by the Federal Circuit suggests that relying on “common sense” in analyzing whether a patent is obvious in view of prior art cannot always be based on common sense alone. In a decision providing...more
8/24/2016
/ Appeals ,
Apple ,
Common Sense Exception ,
Evidence ,
Expert Testimony ,
Google ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Motorola ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Substantial Evidence Standard ,
Vacated
Arming software-patentees with additional precedent in favor of eligibility for software patents post-Alice, the Federal Circuit on June 27, 2016 handed down its decision in BASCOM Global Internet Servs., Inc. v. AT&T...more