Articles Posted in C.D. California

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Vederi owns several patents which cover certain methods for enabling users to navigate a geographic area visually from a device, including a personal computer. Vederi asserted that Google’s Street View service, which allows users to explore geographic location by viewing street-level imagery, infringed its patents. Both parties cross moved for summary judgment on the issue of infringement.

In its summary judgment motion, Google asserted that Street View did not infringe any of Vederi’s patents because each of Vederi’s patents contains the limitation “depicting views of objects in the geographic area, the view being substantially elevations,” which relate to the retrieved images presented to the user. During the Markman hearing, the court construed whether this term applied to curved or spherical views (Vederi’s position) or just vertical or flat views (Google’s position). The court adopted Google’s position “because Vederi’s method of taking, processing and displaying images creates only vertical flat views, not spherical ones.”
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As the Apple v. Samsung case approached trial, Apple filed a motion to enforce prior court orders regarding the exclusion of certain Sony Designs. The motion filed by Apple presented a key issue for the court: whether documents regarding the influence of the “Sony style” on Apple’s design and development of the iPhone would be admissible at trial

This issue arose after the Magistrate Judge excluded portions of Samsung’s expert reports directed toward invalidity of Apple’s design patents at issue in the case because Samsung had not timely disclosed these theories during discovery. As explained by the district court, “[s]pecifically, Judge Grewal determined that Samsung had not timely amended its answers to contention interrogatories. Therefore, Judge Grewal struck portions of the Sherman Report that argued that Apple’s designs were anticipated or obvious in light of prior Sony designs. Specifically, Judge Grewal struck the following: Evidence that Apple produced in-house drawings and mock-ups based on the Sony design style. The Sherman Report referenced “Sony style CAD drawings.” “Apple’s Sony Style Design Mock-Ups,” Sony Ericsson W950,” and the “Sony Ericsson K800i” in support of Samsung’s contention that the D’677 Patent is invalid and that Apple’s design engineers were inspired by Sony.” Samsung appealed the ruling of the Magistrate Judge to the district court, and the district court subsequently denied Samsung’s motion.
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Plaintiff Homeland Houswares, LLC (“Homeland”) filed a declaratory judgment action for a declaration of non-infringement and invalidity against Sorensen Research and Development Trust (“Sorensen”). Homeland took the deposition of one of the inventors of the patent-in-suit, Mr. Paul Brown. Mr. Brown is the co-inventor of U.S. Patent No. 6,599,460 (the ‘460 patent), which Homeland’s products allegedly infringe. In addition to being a co-inventor, Mr. Brown also conducted testing in support of the patent infringement allegations.

During the deposition of Mr. Brown, Homeland asked the inventor several hypothetical questions which he was instructed by counsel for Sorensen not to answer. Homeland filed a motion to compel answers to the deposition questions.
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In a patent case pending before Judge Selna in the Central District of California, Defendant Nestlé USA, Inc. (“Nestlé”) moved pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss Plaintiff Network Signatures, Inc.’s (“NSI”) infringement claims under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). The Court denied Nestlé’s motion finding that NSI’s complaint alleged enough facts to plausibly state a claim for direct, indirect and willful infringement.

The Court recited the well established legal standard for attacking a complaint under Twombly and Iqbal:

In resolving a Rule 12(b)(6) motion under Twombly, the Court must follow a two-pronged approach. First, the Court must accept all well-pleaded factual allegations as true, but “[t]hread-bare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.” Id. Most succinctly stated, a pleading must set forth allegations that have “factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. at 1940. Courts “‘are not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation.'” Id. at 1950 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). “In keeping with these principles[,] a court considering a motion to dismiss can choose to begin by identifying pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950.

Second, assuming the veracity of well-pleaded factual allegations, the Court must “determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.” Id. at 1950. This determination is context-specific, requiring the Court to draw on its experience and common sense; there is no plausibility “where the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct.” Id.

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Plaintiff, Imaginal Systems, LLC (“Imaginal”) filed a patent infringement action against Leggett & Platt, Inc. (“Leggett”) and Simmons Bedding Company (“Simmons”) over three patents, which pertain to automatic stapling machines and a method of manufacturing box spring mattresses. The district court ruled on summary judgment that Imaginal’s patents were valid and that the defendants directly infringed the patents. The district court subsequently held a bench trial on issues of willfulness and equitable defenses. After the district court concluded that the infringement was not willful and rejected the equitable defenses, the district court conducted a jury trial on the issue of damages and the jury returned a $5 million verdict in plaintiff’s favor.

As the district court explained, “[a]t trial, Plaintiff asked for a damages award based on a running royalty. According to Plaintiffs expert, a reasonable royalty in this case was $15,933,037 as of the end of 2011. Defendants, on the other hand, argued that a running royalty for an automatic stapling machine is not prevalent in the bedding industry and asked the jury to limit the damages award to $296,621. The jury returned a verdict of $5,000,000 in Plaintiff’s favor.”
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The defendant filed a motion to stay pending reexamination of the plaintiff’s patent. The district court noted that the plaintiff and defendant are both participants in the oxygen concentrator market. Inogen filed the action on November 4, 2011 asserting infringement of two of its patents. On February 8, 2012, Inova filed a request for inter partes reexamination of both of the patents-in-suit. The PTO acknowledged receipt of the reexamination request and the district court noted that the PTO must decide whether to grant the reexamination request within three months.

After discussing the relevant case law on stays pending reexamination, the district court analyzed the stage of the litigation, simplification of issues, undue prejudice or clear tactical disadvantage to the plaintiff, With respect to the stage of the litigation, the district court noted that Imogen implicitly conceded that the case is in an early stage of litigation and that no discovery dates or trial dates would be set until mid-April. Accordingly, the district court found that this factor weighed in favor of a stay.
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Cambrian Science (“Cambrian”) filed a second amended complaint that alleged patent infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,777,312 (the “‘312 Patent”). The second amended complaint alleged infringement against several defendants, certain of which were labeled by the district court as “Customer Defendants.” As to the Customer Defendants, Cambrian asserted that they infringed the ‘312 Patent directly by making, using, selling or offering to sell certain systems. The second amended complaint also alleged claims for contributing and inducing infringement.
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On summary judgment, the district court determined that the defendants directly infringed all patents at issue in the lawsuit. The district court subsequently conduct a bench trial on issues of willfulness and on defendants’ equitable defenses, particularly whether the defenses of laches and equitable estoppel provided a defense to the finding of direct infringement.

The district court first focused on the issue of willful infringement and stated the two-prong test for willfulness. “To establish willful infringement, a patentee must satisfy a two-pronged test. In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2007). First, the patentee must “show by clear and convincing evidence that the infringer acted despite an objectively high likelihood that its actions constituted infringement of a valid patent.” Id. In analyzing this prong, “[t]he state of mind of the accused infringer is not relevant.” Id. Second, and only after “[the objective prong] is satisfied, the patentee must demonstrate that this objectively-defined risk (determined by the record developed in the infringement proceeding) was either known or so obvious that it should have been known to the accused infringer.” Id.”
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Plaintiff NetAirus Technologies (“NetAirus”) contended that Apple was infringing U.S. Patent No, 7,103,380 (the “‘380 Patent”), which pertains to a method in which a handset device communicates wirelessly over both local area networks and wide area networks. NetAirus claimed that the iPhone 3G and later models infringed the ‘380 Patent by switching between a cellular data network and local Wi-Fi hotspots. Apple moved for summary judgment contending that the ‘380 Patent was invalid.
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K Tech Telecommunications (“K Tech”) filed patent infringement actions against Time Warner and DirecTV. DirecTV and Time Warner moved to dismiss the patent infringement complaint for failure to state a claim or, in the alternative, for a more definite statement. K Tech owns several patents that are directed toward particular ways of updating certain channel information associated with certain digital television signals.

As explained by the district court, “[a]ccording to Plaintiff, full-power television stations identify individual television programs carried by a digital television signal transmitted over the air using a major channel number, a minor channel number, and/or a carrier frequency. Plaintiff’s patents explain that when a television translator facility receives a broadcast, translates it to a new frequency, and rebroadcast it, so-called Program and System Information (“PSIP”) data associated with the transmission, including channel number and carrier frequency, might not be updated. Plaintiff’s patented inventions enable a television translator facility to update the PSIP table with proper channel and carrier frequency information.”
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