Patent Law Practice Center

Unwired Planet Foregoes ITC Complaint Against Apple, RIM

On October 15, Unwired Planet (Nasdaq: UPIP) announced that it was abandoning the pending International Trade Commission (ITC)  investigation it initiated against Apple and Research-in-Motion. According to the company’s announcement, on Thursday, October 11, 2012, Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) Gildea declined to stay the pending investigation despite a joint motion filed by all of the parties.

It seems that Unwired Planet came out on the short end of a claim construction order, which dealt a fatal blow to the company’s infringement assertions.  According to the company, “the ALJ made an unfavorable, and in our view, erroneous construction of a set of closely-related terms – the mobile device terms – in three of our patents.  The error was that the ALJ limited the invention of the patents to mobile devices that do not contain a ‘computer module.'”

Thus, rather than go through with a trial, Unwired Planet decided to throw in the towel in favor of its pending case in the Federal District Court of Delaware, which was initially filed in August 2011 and has been conducted in parallel with the ITC investigation.  This federal district court proceeding deals with the same patents and, according to Unwired Planet, will provide the opportunity to seek different claim construction in the federal court.

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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) Deal Book: Research in Motion Projects a Quarterly Loss – In the midst of the mobile technology patent storm, this post highlights what could serve as the impetus behind another set of valuable patents hitting the marketplace: the financial decline of the BlackBerry manufacturer. As Research in Motion is set to announce its second-consecutive quarterly loss next month, this post notes the possibility of, “the licensing of BlackBerry software or “strategic business model alternatives,” an apparent reference to the possible sale of all or part of the company.”

2) IP Watchdog: PTO Proposes Changes to Implement Micro Entity Patent Fees – This post reports on the USPTO’s announcement of a proposed rule change in regards implementing the micro entity provision of the America Invents Act (AIA). The announcement with the Federal Register is titled “Changes to Implement Micro Entity Status for Paying Patent Fees”.  The Office seeks written comments no later than July 30, 2012. (more…)

Google Challenge To Tierravision Geographic Database Patent Among The Reexamination Requests Filed Week of 10/31/11

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott Daniels, of Reexamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor…

Earlier this year Tierravision sued Microsoft, RIM and Google, accusing them of selling Internet-based map services that infringe U.S. Reissue Patent No. 41,983.   Google has now replied by requesting reexamination of the ‘983 patent (see inter partes Request No. (3)). Google’s Request is a bit spicier than most.  At the very outset, it asserts that “Tierravision buried the 18 claims subject to reexamination in a wildly varied set of 70 total claims,” with the result that “[t]hey bear little or no resemblance to the claims of the original patent, yet the original Examiner subjected them to virtually no scrutiny, allowing them in the first action without any explanation.”  It seems likely that RIM and Microsoft will file their own Requests.

Research in Motion has requested reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 6,055,439 owned by MobileMedia Ideas (see ex parte Request No. (14)). The ‘439 patent was originally assigned to Nokia and is one of a portfolio of mobile phone patents assigned by either Nokia or Sony to MobileMedia.   (more…)