In IPR2015-00838 and IPR2015-00840, Petitioner Tristar Products, Inc. (“Petitioner”) filed petitions to instituted IPRs of certain claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 8,485,565 and 8,622,441 owned by Choon’s Design, LLC (“Patent Owner”). Previously, the Patent Owner had sued the Petitioner on the ‘565 and ‘441 patents. The issue was whether was whether the petitioner can rely upon date of service of the complaint set forth in the proof of service filed by the patent owner in satisfying the time limitations set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 315(b), which precludes institution of an IPR “if the petition requesting the proceeding is filed more than 1 year after the date on which the petitioner, real party in interest, or privy of the petitioner is served with a complaint alleging infringement of the patent.” The unexpected answer was no and, as a result, the PTAB did not institute IPR proceedings involving the ‘565 and ‘411 patents.
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District Court Allows Discovery to Re-Open to Permit Plaintiff to Compel Defendant to Produce Update Sales Records prior to Trial
Isola USA Corp. (“Isola”) moved to compel Taiwan Union Technology Corp. (“TUC”) to provide updated sales data in response to document requests an interrogatories. In response to this discovery, TUC had previously provided sales data on allegedly infringing products that covered a period up to December 31, 2014. Isola moved to compel TUC to update that data to cover a period up to July 31, 2015.
In its motion, Isoled asserts that the information sought was relevant because it would be an update of information TUC has already produced. Isola also asserted that it would be prejudiced if the information was not produced, because it should be allowed to present the most complete picture of damages to the jury at trial. In addition, Isola claimed that TUC was required to supplement its sales data pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(e)(1)(A) on the theory that TUC’s disclosures are now “incomplete” due to the passage of time.
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District Court Awards Defendant Its IPR-Related Fees Under § 285
In Deep Sky Software, Inc. v. Southwest Airlines Co., Defendant Southwest Airlines (“Southwest”) sought its fees and costs following the successful inter partes review of the patent-in-suit, which resulted in all of the asserted claims being invalidated. Among the fees and costs Southwest sought were those related to the filing and prosecution of its IPR petition. Undaunted by the absence of other district court rulings awarding such fees, the district court nonetheless awarded Southwest nearly $400,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs, most of which was related to the IPR proceeding.
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District Court Denies Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction Where Plaintiff Sent ANDA Notice Letter
Defendants, Nang Kuang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (“Nang Kuang”) and CANDA NX-2, LLC (“CANDA”) (collectively, “Defendants”) filed a motion to dismiss, asserting that the patent infringement action filed by Plaintiffs, Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) and the Trustees of Princeton University (collectively, “Plaintiffs”), should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction.
As explained by the district court, “Nang Kuang is a Taiwanese generic drug manufacturer seeking approval from the FDA to market generic versions of ALIMTA®. CANDA, a Texas limited liability company, entered into an agreement with Nang Kuang whereby Nang Kuang agreed to exclusively manufacture and supply the ANDA Product to CANDA, and CANDA agreed to assist Nang Kuang with the U.S. litigation arising from Nang Kuang’s submission of the ANDA, and find marketing partners to market, sell and distributed the ANDA Product if the ANDA application is approved by the FDA. As of this date, the FDA has not approved the ANDA, and neither Nang Kuang nor CANDA has commercially manufactured, used, sold or offered for sale in, or imported into, the United States any ANDA Product. On August 25, 2014, Nang Kuang and CANDA jointly provided a notice of certification to the required parties pursuant to 21 C.F.R. § 314.95(a) (‘Notice Letter’), including Lilly’s Indianapolis-based General Counsel and its Indianapolis trial counsel. The submission of the Notice Letter triggered the forty-five day period in which Lilly had to file the instant Hatch-Waxman action to challenge the ANDA and seek an order that the effective date of any approval of Nang Kuang’s ANDA be not earlier than the expiration date of Plaintiffs’ patents.”
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District Court Grants Summary Judgment of No Damages for Failure to Mark
Plaintiff Juno Manufacturing, LLC (“Plaintiff” or “Juno”) filed a patent infringement complaint against Defendant Nora Lighting, Inc. (“Defendant” or “Nora”). The complaint alleged that Defendant infringed Plaintiff’s patent, No. 5,505,419 (the “‘419 Patent”), entitled Bar Hanger for a Recessed Light Fixture Assembly. Nora filed a motion for summary judgment seeking a judgment that Juno was barred from recovering damages on the ground that Juno failed to properly label its products.
In its motion, Nora asserted that Juno failed to provide proper notice of the ‘419 Patent. As explained by the district court, the requisite notice can be actual or constructive.
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District Court Denies Motion to Exclude CEO from Providing Expert Testimony on Infringement
Defendant filed a motion to strike plaintiff’s expert report on infringement, asserting that the report failed to comply with Fed.R.Civ.P. 26 because, among other things, the report did not constitute a written report under Rule 26. Instead, the plaintiff had provided a declaration from its CEO, who was also the inventor of the patents-in-suit.
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Enovsys v. AT&T: Court Excludes Plaintiff’s Damage Expert for Failure to Apportion and Sua Sponte Bifurcates Trial into Liability and Damage Phases to be Tried to Different Juries
After the court struck plaintiff’s damage expert’s report for failing to tie damages to the limited feature of the patented invention, the court permitted the plaintiff to submit a supplemental expert report. Once the supplemental expert report was served, AT&T again moved to exclude the plaintiff’s damage expert from the upcoming trial.
AT&T contended that the opinions in the Supplemental Report, organized around four alternative damages calculations presented in two sets of two, did not correct the defects in the original report because plaintiff’s expert (Parr) did not tie “his damages calculations to the value of the patented invention.” AT&T further argued that the calculations simply attempt to exclude certain non-infringing revenue from the royalty base and do not attempt to address apportionment at all, which runs afoul of the entire market value rule.
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Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings Based on Unpatentability Under Section 101 Denied Where Patents Were Not Directed to an Abstract Idea
Defendants Motorola Mobility, LLC, Amazon.com, Inc., Apple Inc., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Huawei Device USA, Inc., HTC Corp., HTC America, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Samsung Electronics America, Inc., and Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC (collectively, “Defendants”), filed a Joint Renewed Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings Declaring All Asserted Patent Claims Invalid Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Plaintiff ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. (“ContentGuard”) opposed the motion arguing that the claims were patentable.
The district court began by explain that: At a high level, the Stefik Patents are generally directed toward systems and methods for controlling the use and distribution of digital works in accordance with “usage rights” through the use of “trusted” systems. See claim 1 of the ‘007 Patent (“sending the digital content . . . to the at least one recipient computing device only if the at least one recipient device has been determined to be trusted”). The Court construed “trusted” to require that three types of “integrities”–physical, communication, and behavioral–be maintained. Similarly, the Nguyen Patents are generally directed toward systems and methods for controlling the use and distribution of digital works in accordance with “usage rights”–and more particularly, “meta-rights”–through the use of “trusted” systems.
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In-House Counsel Ordered to Sit for Additional Deposition After Emails Improperly Withheld on Basis of Privilege
Sprint Communications Company, L.P., filed a patent-infringement action against Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, Comcast IP Phone, LLC, and Comcast Phone of Kansas, LLC (collectively, “Comcast”). The district court had previously ordered Comcast to produce seven emails received by Comcast’s in-house patent counsel, David Marcus, that Comcast had improperly withheld as privileged. After it received copies of the emails, Sprint moved to compel Comcast to produce Marcus for a second deposition to answer questions related to the emails.
The district court explained that the “recently produced emails involve communications from 2007 between in-house counsel for Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable, and attorneys from the law firm of Dreier, LLP. The three cable companies had jointly retained Dreier to monitor proceedings in a patent-infringement lawsuit that Sprint had brought against Vonage Holdings Corp. and Vonage America, Inc. in the District of Kansas. Some of the patents that were at issue in Vonage are at issue in this case.”
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District Court Denies Stay Based on Inter Partes Review (“IPR”) Where Less than 25% of Claims at Issue were Subject to IPR
Defendants HTC America, Inc., HTC Corporation, AT&T Mobility LLC, Cellco Partnership, Sprint Spectrum L.P., Kyocera Corporation, Boost Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Inc. and ZTE (USA), Inc. filed a motion to stay pending resolution of an inter partes review before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”).
The court began its analysis by explain that “[p]art of the quid pro quo of any stay pending inter partes review before the Patent Office is the promise of simplification. Not a guarantee, to be sure, but at least a promise that in exchange for freezing a case on the court’s docket, significant issues may go away for good. Where the IPR will address some, but not all, claims asserted in the district court, relative to the quo the value of the quid shrinks considerably.”
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