Articles Posted in E.D. Texas

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In a case pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the district court entered an order that leave of court must be obtained before a summary judgment motion may be filed. Defendant filed a letter brief with the district court seeking leave to file a motion for summary judgment of invalidity based on indefiniteness.

The letter brief asserted that the claims in the patent-in-suit were indefinite based on the Federal Circuit’s decision in Datamize LLC v. Plumtree Software, Inc., 417 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2005). In Datamize, the Federal Circuit affirmed a summary judgment in favor of a competitor on the basis that the claims that disclosed a software program which allowed people to author user interfaces for electronic kiosks were indefinite. The Federal Circuit focused on the patent’s use of the term “aesthetically pleasing” and whether that term met the standard for definiteness. The Federal Circuit found that definition of “aesthetically pleasing” could not depend on an undefined standard and that the definition could not be based on subjective opinion.
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In three patent cases brought by the same plaintiff, Raylon LLC, against numerous defendants, Judge Davis of the Eastern District of Texas denied Rule 11 sanctions and motions for attorneys’ fees under Section 285 of the Patent Statute, and Section 1927 of Title 28.

Following the grant of summary judgment of noninfringement, Defendants filed motions contending that Raylon’s infringement theory was “so legally untenable” that fees and costs should be awarded under Sections 285 and 1927. Defendants earlier had filed a Rule 11 motion seeking sanctions. Raylon asserted U.S. Patent No. 6,655,589 (“the ‘589 patent”) against all of the defendants. All of the claims of the ‘589 patent require a “display being pivotably mounted on said housing.” Raylon argued that this should be construed to mean “an electronic device attached to a housing that visually presents information and allows the display to be moved or pivoted relative to the viewer’s perspective” and alleged that infringement was found where the entire device, not just the display, could be pivoted to the view. Defendant EZ Tag sought a construction of the term to mean that “an integral computer screen which can move positions with regard to the computer housing and is not maintained in a fixed position.” The remaining defendants argued that it should mean “the display must be mounted on the housing and the mounting of the display on the housing must be pivotable so that the display and housing may pivot with respect to each other.” The Court construed the term as “the display must be mounted on the housing so that the display and housing may pivot with respect to each other.” Because it was undisputed that all of the defendants’ accused products had displays that were rigidly mounted as to the housing, the court granted summary judgment of noninfringement, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents.
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The plaintiff sued over 500 defendants for patent infringement in multiple actions in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The patent-at-issue claims a “‘software interface’ that may provide a ‘map of a selected geographic area’ such that ‘information which is associated with particular geographic locations,’ such as ‘good and services,’ ‘can be readily accessed.'” Eighty-one defendants in the various actions moved to stay the case pursuant to the “customer suit exception” to the first-to-file rule.

The moving defendants contended that their case should be stayed pending the outcome of a later filed declaratory judgment action brought by Microsoft and Google, among others, in the District of Delaware, because the declaratory judgment actions were manufacturer suits. The moving defendants contended that they merely license the relevant software from the manufacturers. Accordingly, the moving defendants contended a resolution of those lawsuits may resolve the cases against the licensees.
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Round Rock Research (“Round Rock”) purchased approximately 4500 patents from Micron Technology. Round Rock then sued Dell and Oracle on certain of these patents for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Within a few months of the filing of the lawsuit, Dell and Oracle moved to transfer the case to the Western District of Texas.

In ruling on the motion to transfer, the Magistrate Judge first focused on whether the case could have originally been filed in the Western District of Texas, i.e., whether the Western District of Texas would have personal jurisdiction over the defendants. The Magistrate Judge concluded that it would as Dell is a resident of the Western District of Texas and Oracle sells its accused products worldwide, including within the Western District.
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Plaintiff filed a patent infringement lawsuit against a number of defendants in the Eastern District of Texas. Defendants moved to transfer the case to either the Central District of California or the District of Delaware.

Plaintiff maintains its principal place of business in Connecticut and is incorporated in Delaware. The defendants are incorporated in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland and Germany and maintain their principal place of businesses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nevada, California, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland. None of the defendants have any facilities within Texas. Plaintiff identified a number of independent care facilities that operate the accused product within the Eastern District of Texas. Plaintiff also obtained declarations from five medical professionals within the Eastern District’s subpoena power who specialize in the use of the accused products.
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Plaintiff Mondis Technology LTD. (“Mondis”) filed a patent infringement action against Chimei Innolux Corp. (“Chimei”). The case proceeded to trial before a jury and the jury found a number of claims valid and infringed by Chimei. The jury also found several claims invalid and not infringed by Chimei. With respect to three of the patents, the jury found that the infringement was willful and awarded damages in the amount of $15 million. The district court then determined whether ongoing royalties and supplemental damages for 2011 sales should be awarded.

The district court began by noting that the jury did not have all of the sales data for the first and second quarters when it rendered its damage award. Because a patentee is entitled to damages for the entire period of infringement, the district court determined that Mondis was entitled to an award of supplementary damages. After determining the appropriate amount of sales, including non-U.S. sales that eventually wind up in the United State, the district court applied the royalty rate determined by the jury (which was .5% for monitors and .75% for televisions) and awarded an additional $1.97 million in supplementary damages.
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Plaintiff, Innova Patent Licensing, LLC (“Innova”) filed a patent infringement action against Alcatel-Lucent Holdings (“Alcatel”) for a patent claiming methods for using a mail processing program to scan electronic messages to obtain additional information. Alcatel challenged the patent on the ground that it did not claim eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and moved to dismiss.

The court stated that “[u]nder the patent laws, certain broad categories of subject matter are eligible for patent protection,” and cited the language from Section 101 (” Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or a new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title”) and the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218, 3225 (2010) (“in choosing such expansive terms modified by the comprehensive ‘any,’ Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope”).
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Plaintiff Bruce Saffran, M.D. (“Dr. Saffran”) filed a patent infringement case against Johnson & Johnson. After a jury trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Dr. Saffran finding that the patent was valid and that Johnson & Johnson had willfully infringed the patent. The jury found damages in the amount of $482 million. After the jury returned its verdict, the district court granted a Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a) motion, finding no willful infringement. Johnson & Johnson also moved for a new trial under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59.

Johnson & Johnson brought its motion on two separate grounds: (1) the evidence of willful infringement tainted the trial proceedings and (2) counsel for Plaintiff violated the “Golden Rule.” With respect to the willful infringement argument, the district court noted that it could only make this determination after the development of a full record and it was not appropriate to dismiss the willful infringement allegations on summary judgment. The district court also ruled that it was not convinced a new trial was warranted because of any alleged prejudice to Johnson & Johnson due to the introduction of the willfulness claims at trial. To reach this conclusion, the district court found that the argument failed because the evidence would have been admissible for induced infringement and that, regardless, the jury was instructed separately regarding the law for each type of claim and the type of evidence that could be considered for that claim. Notably, Johnson & Johnson did not object to the jury instructions on these points.
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TiVo filed a patent infringement action against Verizon and Verizon counterclaimed alleging that TiVo infringed six of its patents. TiVo raised inequitable conduct counterclaims against certain of the Verizon patents. Verizon filed a motion to dismiss, which the district court granted under the principles set forth in Exergen Corp. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 575 F.3d 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2009), but permitted TiVo to amend its pleading. TiVo amended its pleadings and Verizon renewed its motion to dismiss.

The district court began its analysis by noting that the Federal Circuit’s decision in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson and Company, 2011 WL 2028255 (Fed. Cir. May 25, 2011) was decided after the parties had completed their briefing on the motion. Although Therasense changed the standard for proving inequitable conduct, the district court stated that Thereasense did not address the pleading standard because it was decided based on the review of a bench trial. Accordingly, Exergen remains the leading authority on the pleading standard for inequitable conduct. “Exergen held that for ‘pleading inequitable conduct in patent cases, Rule 9(b) requires identification of the specific who, what, when, where, and how of the material misrepresentation or omission committed before the PTO.'”
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Plaintiff filed a patent infringement action based on patents for wireless communications networks and a system and method for monitoring and controlling remote devices. Defendants moved to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims for direct infringement and for inducing and contributory infringement based on the argument that plaintiff failed to identify a specific system or product in its complaint. Defendants also asserted that plaintiff failed to adequately plead indirect infringement because the complaint did not identify the underlying infringing product, the direct infringer, or the alleged infringing claims. One of the defendants also asserted that the indirect infringement contentions should be dismissed because the identification of customers as the direct infringers is insufficient and the plaintiff failed to plead any facts to show that defendants knew of the patent and intended to encourage infringement.

The Magistrate Judge recommended denying the motion. After discussing the pleading standards under Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2), the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Twombly (Bell Atl. Corp v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 555-56, 570 (2007))and Iqbal (Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949-50, 1953 (2009)), and Fed.R.Civ.P. 84, Form 18, the court concluded that plaintiff’s allegations of direct and indirect infringement were sufficient.
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