Patent Law Practice Center

Rambus Loses Synchronous Memory Device Method in Reexam

Rambus Inc. was on the wrong end of a Federal Circuit decision recently when the CAFC, per Chief Judge Rader, upheld the decision of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences in a reexamination in which claim 18 of Rambus’s U.S. Patent No. 6,034,918 was found invalid as anticipated. See In re Rambus, Inc. The ‘918 patent relates to a method of controlling a memory device is disclosed wherein the memory device includes a plurality of memory cells.

Judge Rader, writing for a unanimous majority that also included Judge Linn and Judge Dyk, concluded that substantial evidence supported the PTO’s determination that claim 18 reads on the “memory module” in the prior art.

Reexamination Requests Filed the Weeks of August 16th and 23rd

Here is the latest  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor which includes the requests for the weeks of August 16th and August 23rd….

Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of August 16^th

Most notable among last week’s requests is one filed by Sprint attacking an EMSAT patent for a cellular telephone system.  EMSAT’s patent is the subject of no less than eight separate law suits.  Let’s not forget Rambus, whose patents are reexamined more often than those of any other company.  Last week the requester was Hynix, not NVIDIA.

The following inter partes requests were made:

(1)  95/001,420 (electronically filed) – U.S. Patent No. 6,163,816 owned by FlashPoint Technology, Inc. and entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RETRIEVING CAPABILITY PARAMETERS IN AN ELECTRONIC IMAGING DEVICE.  Filed August 18, 2010.

(2)  95/000,562 (paper filed) – U.S. Patent No. 7,002,533 entitled DUAL-STAGE HIGH-CONTRAST ELECTRONIC IMAGE DISPLAY.  Filed August 2, 2010 by Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (more…)

Rambus Wins Limited Exclusion Order at ITC against NVIDIA, despite Pending Reexaminations

The following post comes from Scott Daniels, a partner at Westerman, Hattori, Daniels & Adrian LLP, Practice Center Contributor and author of Reexamination Alert.

Traditionally, District Court judges have issued permanent injunctions to stop infringement of valid patents, regardless of any pending reexamination of the patent in question.  Only if the rejection of the patent claims in reexamination is “final,” would the courts refuse to enjoin the accused infringer.  A few judges – notably Judge James Cohn of the Southern District of Florida and Judge Sue Robinson of Delaware – have recently shown a willingness to defer a decision on injunctive relief even where the rejection of the patent in reexamination is not final.

The Rambus/NVIDA investigation raises the question of the extent to which the ITC is willing to order relief on the basis of patents that are in reexamination at the PTO.  Unfortunately for NVIDIA, its argument to the ITC that it stay relief against NVIDIA was weak because its attack the Rambus patents by reexamination has been “an incomplete success” (to borrow a phrase from President Carter).

That weakness may account, in part, for NVIDIA’s agreeing at the end of last week to a license to the Rambus patents, effectively concluding the dispute between the parties.  Still, the ITC’s analysis in the Rambus/NVIDA investigation remains of great interest to the IP community, as it suggests that the ITC will be extremely reluctant to withhold relief against infringing imports on the basis of an uncompleted reexamination. (more…)