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Garnet Digital sued AT&T, Apple and several other defendants for patent infringement and included a claim for indirect infringement. Garnet Digital accused all of the defendants of infringing U.S. Patent No. 5,379,421, which is entitled “Interactive Terminal for the Access of Remote Database Information.” Garnet Digital made the same allegation against each of the defendants, as follows: “[Defendant] directly or through intermediaries, made, had made, used , imported, provided, supplied, distributed, sold, and/or offered for sale products and/or systems (including at least [Defendant’s product(s)]) that infringed one or more claims of he 421 patnet, and/or induced infringement and/or contributed to the infringement of one or more of the claims of the 421 patent by its customers.”

AT&T and Apple, as well a many of the other defendants, moved to dismiss the indirect infringement claims. Verizon and other defendants also moved to dismiss the patent infringement claims. Both motions were made pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b(6) and the AT&T, Apple motion asserted that the indirect infringement claims did not comply with Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Verizon asserted that the direct infringement claims were insufficient because they did not identify the patent claims asserted, they failed to identify products or services and failed to identify how accused products provide the claimed functionality to perform the claimed method. Garnet Digital responded by claiming that its complaint satisfied Rule 8 and specifically Form 18.
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Plaintiff Promega Corporation (“Promega”) filed an action against Life Technologies Corporation, Applied Biosystems, LLC and Invitrogen IP Holdings, Inc. for infringing and inducing infringement of five patents pertaining to copying of sequences of a DNA strand. In a previous licensing agreement, Life Technologies and Applied Biosystems were permitted to sell the Promega patented products within certain fields. Promega asserted that the defendants were making and selling the products into unpermitted fields, such as clinical diagnostics, clinical research and research markets. The jury agreed with Promega and awarded more than $50 million in damages.

Promega filed a motion to enhance damages, for attorneys and costs and a permanent injunction. The defendants filed a motion asserting that they were entitled to judgment in their favor based on their equitable defenses and also because Promega failed to prove its affirmative case.
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Before the patent trial between Apple and Samsung began, the district court issued a preliminary injunction against Samsung from making, using, offering to sell, or selling within the United States, or importing into the United States, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer. This preliminary injunction issued based on a finding that Apple was likely to prevail on its claim of infringement of Apple’s design patent, U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889 (the “D’889 patent). Samsung immediately filed a notice of appeal of the preliminary injunction motion and the appeal remains pending before the Federal Circuit.

After the jury trial, in which Apple accused many Samsung products, including the Galaxy Tab 10.1, of infringement, the jury found that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe the D’889 patent. Samsung then filed a motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction and to retain the $2.6 million bond that Apple had posted pending determination of damages suffered by Samsung as a result of the injunction.
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Patent Harbor filed a patent infringement action against Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (“Fox”) and other studios, such as The Weinstein Company LLC, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Home Box Office, Inc., and Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. (collectively the “Studio Defendants”). The Studio Defendants allegedly infringed the patent by the use of authoring of scene selection menus included in DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The patent-in-suit describes an improvement to an interactive video system capable of displaying content based on video.

Claim 6 of the patent-in-suit states: “A method for assembling content addressable video, comprising: storing, in addressable memory, a plurality of [frames] of video data in storage locations having addresses, each frame defining a video image having a content for display; storing tags in memory for [frames] of video data in the plurality, the tags indicating the contents of the video images defined by the associated [frames]; executing program steps which assemble and display a content video image in response to the tags, the content video image including positions indicating the content of corresponding [frames] of video data in the plurality; and executing program steps which associate the positions in the content video image with addresses of storage locations storing corresponding frames of video data.”
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a Delaware court’s finding that Medtronic Inc. did not infringe Boston Scientific patents relating to cardiac rhythm therapy (CRT) devices known as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Medtronic, Inc. v. Boston Scientific Corp., No. 2011-1313 (Fed. Cir. September 18, 2012). The Federal Circuit found that the lower court had improperly placed the burden of showing non-infringement on the patent owner instead of on the declaratory judgment plaintiff-licensee.

The patents at issue (RE38,119 and RE39,897) were owned by Mirowski Family Ventures LLC (MFV) and exclusively licensed to Guidant Corp., which was acquired by Boston Scientific Inc. Medtronic had a sublicense to the ‘119 patent, which allowed it to challenge its validity, enforceability and scope via a declaratory judgment action. As per the sublicense, Medtronic began paying royalties. It also challenged the patent’s validity. A Litigation Tolling Agreement (LTA) was entered, which stayed litigation and called for MFV to identify Medtronic products that it believed were covered by the ‘119 patent. Under the LTA, if Medtronic disagreed with the list of patented products it had the right to retain the license but was required to seek declaratory relief of non-infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The fact that Medtronic remained a licensee meant that MFV could not counterclaim for patent infringement. Medtronic did disagree with MFV’s listing of patented products, thus giving rise to the lower court action.
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PageMelding filed a patent infringement action against ESPN asserting a patent that enables internet service and content providers to form mutually beneficial collaborations where website content is customized in accordance with those collaborations. PageMelding asserted that examples of infringement include, but are not limited to, ESPN3 and WatchESPN websites.

After several attempts to amend after motions to dismiss, PageMelding ultimately succeeded in filing an operative complaint. ESPN then filed an answer with twelve affirmative defenses and two counterclaims, one for a declaration of non-infringement and another for invalidity of the patent-in-suit. PageMelding then filed a motion to dismiss the counterclaims on the ground that they failed to state any facts that would put plaintiff on notice of the basis of the claims and to strike the affirmative defenses because they lacked any factual allegations and were wholly conclusory.
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Plaintiff Abbott Laboratories and Abbott Biotechnology Limited (“Abbott”) filed a declaratory judgment action that defendant’s patent was invalid. After the defendant demand a jury trial, Abbott moved to strike the defendant’s demand for a jury trial on the issue of patent validity.

As the district court explained, “[t]he parties agree that whether a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial arises here is governed by Tull v. United States, 48 U.S. 412 (1987), which “turns on whether the case ‘is more similar to cases that were tried in courts of law than to suits tried in courts of equity or admiralty’ in 1791,” when the Seventh Amendment was adopted. Tegal Corp. v. Tokyo Electron Am., Inc., 257 F.3d 1331, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (quoting Tull, 481 U.S. at 417)). A right to a jury trial arises only if a case is more similar to those that were tried in courts of law. Id. This inquiry requires a two-part evaluation of (1) the nature of the action; and (2) the nature of the remedy sought. See id. (citing Tull, 481 U.S. at 417-18)). In this analysis, “the nature of the remedy is more important than that of the action.” Id. (citing Chauffeurs, Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558, 565 (1990); Tull, 481 U.S. at 417, 421)).”
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Radiation Stabilization Solutions (“RSS”) filed a patent infringement action against Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (“Varian”) and several hospitals. The hospitals moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the allegations were inadequate under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).

RSS is the exclusive licensee of the patent-in-suit, which is entitled “Systems to Stabilize an Irradiated Internal Target.” The Hospital Defendants are each health care facilities operating in the Chicago area. According to the district court, “RSS alleges, with no factual support or context, that each of the Defendants directly and/or indirectly infringes the [patent-in-suit] because the Defendants either use, offer for sale, sell, import, or induce others to use, offer, sell, or import systems that use Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT).”
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Plaintiff Wisconsin Technology Venture Group, LLC (“Wisconsin Technology”) contended that Fatwallet, Inc. (“Fatwallet”) infringed its patent pertaining to Internet technology. Fatwallet filed several affirmative defenses, as well as counterclaims for invalidity and non-infringement of the patent-in-suit. Wisconsin Technology moved to dismiss the counterclaims under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) for defendant’s failure to comply with the pleading standards set forth in Fed.R.Civ. P. 8 and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009), and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007).

The district court granted the motion with respect to the counterclaim of invalidity for failing to allege facts sufficient to satisfy the pleading requirements of Rule 8 for that claim, but denied the motion with respect to the counterclaim for noninfringement. As stated by the district court, “Defendant’s only allegations in support of its counterclaim for noninfringement are that “[plaintiff] asserts in this action that [defendant] is liable for infringement of the ‘418 patent,” and that defendant “is not infringing, has not infringed, and is not liable for any infringement of the ‘418 patent. . . .” Dft.’s Ans. & Counterclaim, dkt. #5, ¶¶ 34-34. With respect to its invalidity counterclaim, defendant alleges that “[t]he ‘418 patent is invalid for failure to meet one or more of the conditions of patentability specified in Title 35, U.S.C., or the rules, regulations, and law related thereto, including, without limitation, in 35 U.S.C. §§ 101, 102, 103, and/or 112.” Id. at ¶ 38. Plaintiff contends that these allegations fail to satisfy the applicable pleadings standards because they are wholly conclusory and provide no factual details about why defendant believes its products are not infringing and why it believes plaintiff’s patents are invalid.”
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Plaintiff Imperium (IP) Holdings, Inc. (“Imperium”) filed a patent infringement action accusing eight defendants of infringing several patents. With respect to Apple, Imperium asserted that Apple infringed all of the patents-in-suit and listed the iPhone 3G, specifically. Imperium subsequently provided detailed claim charts setting forth Imperium’s theory of infringement in relation to an exemplary device and also identified other devices with image sensors and image processors believed to infringe the asserted claims of the patents in suit in the same or substantially similar manner.

Imperium later moved for leave to amend its infringement contentions to add 74 additional products. In support of this motion, Imperium asserted, according to the district court, “[o]n May 25, 2012, Plaintiff contracted with UBM Techlnsights to obtain access to its Information Retrieval Insights System (“IRIS”) for a sum of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000). IRIS could provide the identity of the image sensors and processors that are incorporated into many, but not all, of Defendants’ devices. Upon receiving access to IRIS, Imperium immediately began utilizing IRIS to identify the image sensors in Defendants’ products. Through IRIS, Plaintiff identified 74 additional products containing image sensors and/or image processors manufactured, used, sold, offered for sale, and/or imported by Defendants that Plaintiff asserts infringe the patents-in-suit in the same manner as the products previously identified.”
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