Patent Law Practice Center

Top 10 IP Litigation Battles of 2011

An article on Law.com’s Corporate Counsel provides a great breakdown of the biggest Intellectual Property litigation wins of 2011. Not surprisingly, there is a predominance of patent litigation on the list. The article references a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers that concludes patent holders brought 2,892 U.S. infringement lawsuits in 2010—an increase of more than 5 percent over the year before. From the list of the biggest Intellectual Property litigation wins, below are the patent based cases. For the list in its entirety, click here.

1. Jobs’s Job One . . .

The smartphone market moves fast, so a court order forcing a manufacturer to sit out a product cycle can be devastating. That’s part of the reason the International Trade Commission has become a red-hot forum for smartphone patent disputes. The trade body can’t award money damages, but it can impose costly “import bans” on foreign products sold in the United States. Smartphone manufacturers have brought a slew of ITC actions in hopes of securing such bans against rivals.

In November, Apple and its outside lawyers at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe scored a major defense win in one of the first smartphone disputes on the ITC’s docket. S3 Graphics, Inc., a Fremont, California–based graphic chipmaker, had filed an ITC action against Apple in May 2010, claiming Apple’s iPhone infringed four of its patents. In July an administrative judge ruled for S3 Graphics. But in November, a six-judge panel reversed, ruling that Apple did not infringe any of the asserted patents.

The loss for S3 Graphics was also a loss for Taiwan-based HTC Corporation, the leading maker of Android phones. It announced in July that it would acquire S3 Graphics for $300 million in a bid to bolster its ammunition in patent fights. HTC told The Wall Street Journal in November 2011 that it was considering canceling the acquisition in light of the ITC’s ruling. (more…)

Chief Judge Rader to Speak at Patent Law Institute on All-Star Panel!

Patent law heavyweights will convene for what looks to be two very special days in New York City at PLI’s 6^th Annual Patent Law Institute on February 16-17^th.

 Chief Judge Randall Rader of the Federal Circuit will participate in an all-star dialogue panel between the bench and bar along with United States District Judge William Young and nationally-recognized expert practitioners Donald Dunner, Seth Waxman and Dean John Whealan of the George Washington University Law School.

Robert Stoll, who recently retired as Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, is slated to open the program with a PTO keynote address. Commissioner Stoll is expected to report the latest developments regarding the PTO’s on-going implementation of the America Invents Act and other critical PTO developments.

Co-Chairs Scott M. Alter (Faegre Baker Daniels LLP), Douglas R. Nemec (Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP) and John M. White (Berenato & White; Director of Patent Professional Development, Practising Law Institute) will navigate attendees through 6 exciting plenary sessions that discuss the practice impacts of recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit decisions, AIA changes, current critical patent issues from the corporate counsel perspective, views from the District Court bench, the never-ending PTO changes and for good measure, an hour of legal ethics credit! (more…)

Patent Attorneys Leave Firms for NPEs

OK it’s Super Bowl season so forgive the football picture but are some top patent litigators switching sides?

An article by the Wall Street Journal describes the transition of two patent attorneys who left incredibly lucrative careers representing some of the biggest companies in the world to work for nonpracticing entities:

As recently as three years ago, the two lawyers were among a small group of elite attorneys used by U.S. companies to defend their patents in courtrooms.

Mr. Desmarais was a lawyer for such companies as International Business Machines Corp., GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Boston Scientific Corp., Alcatel-Lucent SA and Verizon Wireless. The clients of Mr. Powers included Cisco Systems Inc., Merck & Co., MicrosoftCorp., Oracle Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and Apple Inc.

But in the last couple of years, both men have turned about-face. They have created practices to represent not the largest, most tech-savvy companies, but to work for patent-holding plaintiffs known as “nonpracticing entities,” or what some critics call “patent trolls.”

Top 5 Patent Law Blog Posts of the Week

Today we continue our weekly installment highlighting the best of the patent blogosphere from the past week. If there are any patent blogs you think should be highlighted by our Top 5, please comment on this post and we’ll check them out!

1) IPWatchdog: Court Slams Frivolous & Vexatious Litigation with $4.7 MM in Fees – This post discusses the recent developments within the Federal Circuit in regards to no longer tolerating abusive patent litigation tactics with the case MarcTec, LLC v. Johnson & Johnson.

2) Foss Patents: Thanks to Apple’s flawed litigation strategy, HTC has nothing to fear until March 2013 (in the US) – This post outlines what Florian Mueller considers to be tactical missteps by Apple’s litigation team when dealing with Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, and HTC.

3) Patently-O: 2011 Patent Grants: A New Record – This post highlights the banner year the USPTO had in 2011 as more patents were granted in 2011 than any other year in history. Check out the post for a detailed graph demonstrating the amount of US Utility Patents granted over the last ten years. (more…)

CAFC Moving Cases On Up Out of Delaware

A motion to transfer a patent case out of Delaware was granted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, thus setting a potential precedent for patent litigation that is often brought in Delaware. Patent litigation frequently begins in Delaware as the majority of U.S. corporations are incorporated there. Because corporations go out of their way to be registered in Delaware, it has been a long settled principle that cases cannot be transferred out of the Circuit of Delaware as the corporations freely chose to incorporate there in the first place.

On December 2, 2011, the CAFC granted a writ petition on behalf of the defendants to transfer the case to the Northern District of California, focusing on the fact that although the corporation was incorporated, there are others issues a court will look at in considering changing the venue, such as convenience of witness location as well as the location of the corporation/moving party’s business records and documents. The Circuit of Delaware’s rationale that the choice to incorporate in Delaware implies the choice to try cases in Delaware courts is not all that unreasonable. However, as reasonable as the court’s rationale is, the reasoning does not outright prohibit the right to move for a venue change when such a change would facilitate convenience and court efficiency.

Time will tell if the CAFC’s ruling will impact the Circuit of Delaware’s future decisions regarding transferring cases out of Connecticut. If anything, the ruling could just be setting up a precedent for litigants to simply attempt a venue change where they would not have done so before.