Published on:

by

In this dispute over the inventorship of a patent that is integral to BlackBerry products, the district court held a bench trial on the applicability of laches. The issue at the bench trial turned on whether RIM suffered economic prejudice as a result of plaintiff’s delay in bringing the lawsuit.

The complaint to correct the inventorship of the patent-in-suit was filed on August 1, 2011. After a summary judgment motion disposed of the state law claims, the district court found that RIM had established a presumption of laches on the correction-of-inventorship claim but the plaintiff had rebutted the presumption by showing a lack of evidentiary or economic prejudice that resulted from the unreasonable delay in bringing the lawsuit. The district court then ordered a bench trial to resolve the disputed issues of fact as laches is an equitable defense that is heard by the court and not a jury. After the bench trial, the district court made various findings of fact.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Complainant OSRAM AG (“OSRAM”) moved for a summary determination that it had satisfied the economic prong of the domestic industry requirement. Respondent LG Electronics, Inc. and other LG entities (collectively, LG) opposed the motion.

OSRAM moved for summary determination on the ground that it has devoted substantial resources in the United States, including engineering and research of products that incorporate LEDs. As stated by the Administrative Law Judge, “OSRAM contends that it satisfies the economic prong of the domestic industry requirement as set forth in 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(3)(C) for U.S. Patent Nos. 7,151,283 (“the ‘283 patent”) and 7,271,425 (“the ‘425 patent”). OSRAM states that it has devoted substantial resources in the United States, including investments in domestic engineering and research and development (“R&D”) of products incorporating LEDs, at its two domestic subsidiaries, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, Inc. and OSRAM Sylvania Inc. Mem. at 1. OSRAM further states that these investments relate to work on OSRAM LEDs with chip level conversion technology (“OSRAM LEDs with CLC”), which OSRAM asserts are covered by claims of the ‘283 patent, and OSRAM’s Advanced Power TOPLEDs (“OSRAM APT LEDs”), which OSRAM asserts are covered by claims of the ‘425 patent Id OSRAM summarizes its investments in domestic engineering and R&D from October 2009 through September 2011.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Defendant TIBCO Software Inc. (“TIBCO”) moved to dismiss plaintiff’s claims for inducing infringement and willful infringement. Plaintiff’s complaint alleged that “TIBCO is ‘inducing its customers to directly infringe the ‘864 Patent by providing its customers and others with detailed explanations, instructions, and information as to arrangements, applications, and use of its TIBCO Spotfire Platform products that promote and demonstrate how to use those products in an infringing manner. VSi avers it “demonstrated its patented software MIDaS to Spotfire in 2005 and notified Spotfire MIDaS was covered by U.S. Patent No. 6,877,006 (‘the ‘006 Patent’).'”

The complaint also alleged that “[i]n ‘early 2006,’ according to the FAC, VSi made a ‘similar presentation’ of its MIDaS software to TIBCO. Id. During that presentation, VSi allegedly notified TIBCO that MIDaS was covered by the ‘006 patent and another pending continuation patent application that later issued as that ‘864 patent. Id. Finally, VSi pleads that TIBCO had actual knowledge of the ‘864 patent at least by December 23, 2011, the date this suit was filed.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Plaintiff retained an expert to opine on damages arising from the defendants’ alleged infringement of the asserted patents. The defendants moved to exclude the expert report on two grounds: (1) the expert failed to properly apportion the value of the patented features; and (2) the expert misapplied the market value rule. The expert had attributed 30% of the value of the accused products to the asserted bus interface department.

The district court began its analysis by stating the applicable law: “An expert witness may provide opinion testimony if ‘(a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issues; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient fact or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case.” Fed. R. Evid. 702. A trial court is “charged with a ‘gatekeeping role,’ the objective of which is to ensure that expert testimony admitted into evidence is both reliable and relevant.’ Sundance, Inc. v. DeMonte Fabricating Ltd., 550 f.3D 1356, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2008).”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

In this dispute over inventorship of a patent, Affymetrix (“Affymetrix”) and Gregory Kirk (“Mr. Kirk”) sought to correct U.S. Patent Nos. 7,510,481 and 7,612,020 to add Mr. Kirk as one of the inventors on the patents. The patents are directed to a method and an apparatus for conducting genetic testing using microarrays and are assigned to the defendant, Illumina, Inc. (“Illumina”). The plaintiffs contended that Mr. Kirk is a joint inventor because of certain information he disclosed in an email to one of the named inventors several months before the first patent application was filed.

The plaintiffs filed a motion in limine to preclude Illumina’s expert from testifying at trial on the ground that his opinions were neither relevant nor helpful. In its motion, the plaintiffs divided Illumina’s expert report into three parts: (1) an opinion that Mr. Kirk did not contribute a “complete and operative invention”; (2) an opinion on Mr. Kirk’s contribution to “decoding”; and (3) an opinion on the “organization and structure” of Mr. Kirk’s emails.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

In this matter pending before the International Trade Commission (“ITC”), the ITC (Administrative Law Judge James Gildea) rejected the respondent’s pre-hearing statement for failing to follow ITC Ground Rule 7.1. As noted by Judge Gildea, the parties filed their respective prehearing statements on May 3, 2012. “Ground Rule 7.1 requires complainants and respondents to provide party-specific additional submissions correlating the asserted claims to the accused products or prior art, respectively.” Judge Gildea also noted that the rule sets forth sample charts to avoid any confusion as to what data is required.

Judge Gildea then noted that “[o]ther parties in other investigations have not had any trouble understanding the requirements. Indeed, complainants in this Investigation submitted a one page chart providing the information requested.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

In the ongoing battle between Apple and Motorola, Motorola moved to strike portions of Apple’s supplemental expert report on damages. The district court had previously granted Apple’s request to supplement its damages expert report to address information that was disclosed between the filing of Apple’s initial damage report and the close of discovery. The royalty estimate disclosed in the expert report was based on the costs of designing around the patent-in-suit.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Bear Creek Technologies, Inc. (“Bear Creek”) is the patent holder in fourteen patent infringement actions pending in three different district courts. Bear Creek moved for centralization in the District of Delaware or, alternatively, the Eastern District of Virginia. In each of the cases, Bear Creek alleged that various telecommunications companies infringed the Bear Creek patent and the various telecommunications companies raised questions surrounding the validity or enforceability of the patent.

Certain of the defendants did not oppose centralization but suggested that the district should be either Delaware or the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Other defendants opposed centralization and the Vonage defendants asserted that the America Invents Act (“AIA”) limits centralization under 28 U.S.C. § 1407.
Continue reading

Published on:

by

The court had previously granted Apple’s motion to compel Samsung to produce the source code for Samsung’s accused products. Apple moved to compel a second time and sought issue preclusion sanctions for Samsung’s failure to produce source code. The court decided to focus on Samsung’s failure to produce code for its “design-around” products. The court focused on design-arounds because by “their very nature design-arounds impact key questions of liability, damages, and injunctive relief.”

The court noted that its previous order had required Samsung to produce all source code for all accused products by December 31, 2011. Samsung did not produce the source code for the design-around products until March, 12, 2012: “Samsung did not produce source code for its ‘891 and ‘163 design-around until March 10 and 12, 2012 – after the close of fact discovery – knowing full well that the court would not grant the parties any exceptions. Samsung offers no explanation why it could not produce code in commercial release months before the deadline, or produce other code in commercial release until months after the deadline. Samsung also offers no explanation why it failed to bring any source code production problems to the court’s attention as soon as practicable and instead put the onus on Apple to seek relief.”
Continue reading

Published on:

by

Pact XPP Technologies (“Pact”) filed a patent infringement action against Xilinx, Inc. (“Xilinx”) and other defendants. Xilinx filed a motion to exclude Pact’s expert’s testimony on inducement. Pact claimed that the defendants induced Xilinx customers to infringe the asserted patents and presented expert witness to offer an opinion that Xilinx actively induces infringement, which in part relied on consumer survey evidence.

The court began it analysis by noting that “[a]n expert witness may provide opinion testimony if ‘(a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issues; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case.’ Fed. R. Evid. 702. A trial court is ‘charged with a ‘gatekeeping role,’ the objective of which is to ensure that the expert testimony admitted into evidence is both reliable and relevant.’ Sundance, Inc., v. DeMonte Fabricating Ltd., 550 F.3d 1356, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2008).
Continue reading