Published on:

by

After the PTAB instituted a CBM review of the patents-in-suit, Google sought a stay of the litigation pending resolution of CBM review by the PTAB. The district court explained that “[c]ourts consider four factors when deciding whether to stay litigation pending CBM review: (1) whether a stay will simplify the issues, (2) whether discovery is complete and a trial date is set, (3) whether there will be undue prejudice to the non-moving party, and (4) whether a stay will reduce the burden on the Court and the parties. See AIA § 18(b)(1).”

With respect to the first factor, the district court found that some “simplification of the issues could result from cancellation of the asserted claims or, failing that, from the estoppel effects on Google arising from presenting its arguments to the PTAB in the CBM process. See AIA § 18(a)(1)(D).” But the district court also found that the “estoppel only goes so far, especially as the PTAB rejected several of the grounds for CBM review articulated by Google. Thus, unless the PTAB invalidates all of the asserted claims on a basis on which it has initiated CBM review, it is likely that the Court will have to address at least some of Google’s invalidity defenses. Therefore, while the simplification factor favors a stay, it does not do so by much.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

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.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

In the ongoing patent battle between Samsung and Apple, Samsung, trying to turn the tables on Apple, filed a motion for sanctions based on Apple’s disclosure of confidential information. The court had previously sanctioned Samsung for disclosing confidential information.

Prior to addressing the specific Samsung motion, the court went through the factual background of the prior ruling sanctioning Samsung. “On June 4, 2013, Nokia and Samsung met to continue their ongoing negotiations for a license deal. At that meeting, Dr. Seungho Ahn of Samsung told Paul Melin of Nokia that he knew the terms of Nokia’s license agreement with Apple; he then recited the terms and indicated that his lawyers had told him what they were. As Dr. Ahn put it, ‘all information leaks.'”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Innovention Toys, LLC prevailed in a patent infringement action against MGA Entertainment. After the Court entered a final judgment, the parties agreed that execution of the judgment should be pending resolution of post-judgment motions and appeal but disagreed regarding the amount Defendant MGA should deposit with the district court as security.

MGA argued that it should only deposit the amount of the judgment plus one year of post-judgment interest at 0.10%. Innovention asserted that MGA should deposit the amount of the judgment plus 20%, citing Local Rule 62.2.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Plaintiff Glas-Weld Systems, Inc., filed a patent infringement and unfair competition action against defendants Michael P. Boyle, dba Surface Dynamix, and Christopher Boyle. Plaintiff moved for partial summary judgment and to supplement the record, and Christopher Boyle moved to compel depositions of plaintiff’s expert. The district court stayed the partial summary judgment motion pending the ruling on claim construction and ordered that once the court construes the patent claims, the parties could supplement their briefing in support of and in opposition to the motion for partial summary judgment.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Plaintiffs Scott Clare, Neil Long, and Innovative Truck Storage, Inc. filed a patent infringement action against Defendant Chrysler Group, LLC, arguing that Defendant infringed their patent for hidden pick up truck bed storage. Chrysler Group filed a motion to strike Plaintiffs’ errata sheets from depositions, arguing that Plaintiffs were attempting to materially alter, through the errata sheets, the witnesses’ deposition testimony.

As explained by the district court, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(e) contemplates changing a deposition transcript in “form or substance.” Courts have placed different burdens on a party attempting to change a deposition in substance and have different views of Rule 30(e).
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Plaintiffs filed a motion to permit them to file an affidavit, along with billing documents, under seal. The affidavit, along with its exhibits, was forty-seven pages in length. In the motion, the Plaintiffs contend that “the fees charged for each attorney as well as information contained in the time entries are confidential and private financial information of Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs’ counsel and is not publicly available information.” The district court stated that the Plaintiffs did not cite any case law in support of their position.

The district court then examined the relevant local rules. Local Rule 26.2 states: “Except as otherwise provided by statute, rule, or order, all pleadings and other papers of any nature filed with the Court (“Court Records”) shall become a part of the public record of this Court.” E.D. Tenn. L.R. 26.2(a). In order to seal any part of the record, a party must show good cause. E.D. Tenn. L.R. 26.2(b).
Continue reading

Published on:

by

In STC.UNM v. Intel Corp., Fed. Cir., No. 2013-1241 (June 6, 2014), The Federal Circuit found that the plaintiff patent owner did not have standing for its infringement claims because one of the four co-owners had not been joined and could not be involuntarily joined.

The asserted patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,705,321 (“Method for Manufacture of Quantum Sized Periodic Structures in Si Materials”) issued in 1998 with four named inventors: three employees of the University of New Mexico (“UNM”) and the fourth an employee of Sandia Corp. A joint assignment made two years prior to issuance incorrectly identified all four inventors as UNM employees. This was subsequently corrected with an assignment by UNM to Sandi Corp. Before the issuance of the ‘321 patent, two of the UNM inventors filed another patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,042,998, that incorporated the ‘321 patent by reference and issued in 2000. During the prosecution of the ‘998 patent, the PTO rejected the application for double-patenting in view of the ‘321 patent. UNM filed a terminal disclaimer to overcome the double-patenting rejection, which represented that “any patent granted on this instant application shall be enforceable only for and during such period” that the two patents were commonly owned, and that UNM was “the owner of record of a 100 percent interest.” However, Sandia never claimed ownership in the ‘998 patent.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

After a hearing in an Investigation occurred between February 24 and March 7, 2014 and with the parties having submitted their opening post-hearing briefs on March 21, 2014 and their reply post-hearing briefs on March 28, 2014, the Administrative Law Judge determined that supplemental briefing was necessary after the Supreme Court’s decision in Nautilus v. Biosig.

Noting that the final initial determination on violation in the Investigation was currently due to be issued no later than June 20, 2013, the Administrative Law Judge pointed out that “among the material issues involved in this investigation is whether certain claims of the asserted patents are indefinite under 35 U.S.0 § 112.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Two weeks earlier, the court excluded the expert opinion and testimony of Plaintiff Golden Bridge Technology’s (“GBT”) damages expert. Nonetheless, the court gave GBT one week to submit a new report based on a new theory. After GBT met its deadline, Apple moved to exclude the second report as well.

As explained by the court, “Apple’s motion points out several of the significant flaws in Schulze’s current report: (1) Schulze improperly and sub silencio allocated the entire value of Apple’s portfolio licenses with Ericsson and Nokia to a tiny subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of the patents and standards in those portfolios; (2) Schulze improperly tripled the per-unit rate that Apple would have paid to GBT based on purely academic articles; (3) Schulze improperly failed to compare the patent-in-suit’s technical merits to those of other standards essential patents and (4) Schulze improperly failed to allocate any value to the non-license terms of the Ericsson and Nokia agreements.”
Continue reading