Articles Posted in E.D. Texas

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The plaintiff, U.S. Ethernet Innovations, LLC (“USEI”), filed a patent infringement action against several defendants in the Eastern District of Texas. The district court then transferred the cases to the Northern District of California. While litigation in the Northern District of California proceeded, USEI filed another patent infringement case against Texas Instruments Incorporated (“TI”).

The TI case then proceeded with two jury trials. The first jury returned a verdict finding that the patents-in-suit (“Early Transmit Patents”) were not invalid. The second jury found that TI infringed the asserted claims of U.S. Patent No 5,434,872 and awarded USEI $3,000,000.00 in damages. After the district court rejected TI’s equitable defense of laches, the district court entered a Final Judgment in the case, but the Final Judgment “specifically noted that the Court was still considering the issues raised in the parties’ post-verdict briefing.”
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The Plaintiff filed a motion in limine seeking the district court to preclude the Defendant from offering at trial any testimony regarding the Defendant’s opinion of counsel defense that was not disclosed during discovery. As explained by the district court, the Plaintiff also alleged that the Defendant selectively produced certain documents pertaining to the Defendant’s opinion of counsel defense and instructed witnesses not to testify on matters concerning the Defendant’s investigation into the Plaintiff’s allegations of patent infringement and theft of trade secrets.
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The defendant, Samsung, had previously filed IPRs on several of plaintiff’s patents, which were granted and denied in part. After the plaintiff reduced its asserted claims to those that the PTO had declined to institute review, Samsung filed an additional IPR to challenging the asserted claims and moved to stay pending the new IPR.

In requesting the stay, Samsung argued that “the IPRs will address the validity of all asserted claims of the patents-in-suit” and “[c]onsidering the current status and likely disposition of each USPTO proceeding for the patents in suit, there is strong possibility that nearly all of Rembrandt’s infringement allegations will be moot.” The district court observed that the “simplification offered by Defendants is not likely based on the recent denials of IPR institutions.”
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Plaintiffs Smartflash LLC and Smartflash Technologies Limited (collectively “Smartflash”) filed patent infringement actions against Apple, Inc. (“Apple”), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC (collectively “Samsung”), HTC Corporation, HTC America, Inc., and Exedea, Inc. (collectively “HTC”) (all collectively “Defendants”) alleging infringement of several patents.

Smartflash’s expert on damages, Mr. Mills, based portions of his damage calculations on surveys conducted by Dr. William Wecker. As explained by the district court, Smartflash hired Dr. Wecker, a statistician, to conduct four surveys related to consumer purchasing decisions of the accused products: (1) an “App Store” survey; (2) a “Movies and TV Shows” survey; (3) a “Music” survey; and (4) a “Books and Parental Controls” survey. Each of the surveys asked consumers if certain features “motivated” them to purchase accused products.
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In this patent infringement action, Apple challenged the opinions of the plaintiff’s damage expert on several bases, including the determination of a royalty rate based on the price of third-party applications.

First, Apple contended that the expert’s, Mr. Bratic’s, “analysis is deficient and unreliable because MTEL’s technical expert categorically stated that he never evaluated any third party apps.” The district court rejected this challenge as the technical expert, Dr. Nettleton, asserted that he did, in fact, have conversations with Mr. Bratic over the course of “two, possibly three, phone calls in fact.” The district court also stated that “Apple’s complaint that Mr. Bratic is merely ‘parroting conclusions’ also fails, as even Apple acknowledges that Mr. Bratic ‘must … rely on a technical expert to support his opinion concerning the functionality of the selected third-party apps’ since he is not himself a technical expert.” Although the district court was sensitive to the “credibility concerns” raised by Apple, it stated that cross-examination was “the ideal vehicle with which to address such concerns.”
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At the end of trial, the Defendant, Texas Instruments Incorporated’s (“TI”), pursued its equitable defense of laches, the only remaining issue left in this patent infringement case. The district court conduced an evidentiary hearing on laches at which the district court heard the live testimony of five witnesses and also accepted deposition designations, prior trial testimony, and exhibits to consider separate from the live testimony.

As explained by the district court, “[t]he equitable defense of laches may be available where the plaintiff unreasonably delayed filing its infringement suit. See A.C. Aukerman Co. v. R.L. ChaidesConstr. Co., 960 F.2d 1020, 1032 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (en banc). The defense is applicable where the accused infringer proves two things: (1) ‘the plaintiff delayed filing suit for an unreasonable and inexcusable length of time from the time the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of its claim against the defendant,’ and (2) the defendant suffered material prejudice as a result of the delay Id. at 1032. The defendant must prove delay and prejudice by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 1045.”
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In Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., Affinity moved in limine to exclude any reference to the decision of the PTAB regarding an inter partes reexamination filed by a defendant in an earlier case involving a related patent, i.e.., one stemming from the same application and thus sharing the same specification. In the prior decision, the PTAB found that the specification lacked written description for the term “soft button.” Affinity argued that the PTAB’s decision should be excluded because it conflicted with a prior decision of the district court on the same issue.
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In this patent infringement action between Personal Audio (“Personal Audio”) and Togi Entertainment, Inc. (“Togi”), the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment based on a license defense. They requested summary judgment “to the extent Plaintiff’s claims involve Apple software, products, systems, or services, all of which were previously licensed by Plaintiff under Section 2.2 of the Apple License.”
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As this patent infringement action headed to trial, the district court scolded both parties for their exhibit lists and, in particular, the objections to the exhibit lists. The district court explained that “Affinity has submitted a 39 page list of 979 exhibits. Out of the first 360 exhibits Ford objected to no less than 250, at which point the court stopped counting, although it appears that the percentage of objections is about the same for the remaining 607 exhibits. Even better, the objections are not actually stated and do not refer to specific portions of any exhibit. Instead Ford uses a code consisting of 16 symbols.”

The district court then criticized Ford’s “secret decoder ring” of objections. “Ford did provide a version of a ‘secret decoder ring’ so the court could discern, for example, that exhibits marked ‘BT’ were objected to on the ground that they were ‘Admissible for Bench Trial Only,’ an objection not listed in the Federal Rules of Evidence. However, most of the exhibits were marked with multiple symbols, requiring repeated references to the ‘code.’ For example, Plaintiffs Exhibits 174 through 228 were all marked ‘ R, P, H.'”
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ThinkOptics, Inc. (“ThinkOptics”) filed a patent infringement action accusing several Defendants of infringing three patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,796,116; 7,852,317; and 7,864,159. As explained by the district court, “[t]he three patents share a common specification and are directed to systems and methods for displaying and moving a cursor on a screen using a handheld pointing device. All defendants other than Nintendo have since been dismissed. The accused products encompass Nintendo Wii consoles that operate with the Wii Remote, Wii Remote Plus, and the Wii Sensor Bar.”
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