ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. v. Google, Inc. DC CAFC

The Federal Circuit has reversed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that cancelled three claims from a ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. digital rights management (DRM) patent, holding that the PTAB had incorrectly determined that the challenged patent qualified for covered business method (CBM) review. In a July 11 opinion, the court held for two CBM reviews filed by Apple and Google (CBM2015-00040, CBM2015-00160) that the Board had erred by ruling that the patent was a CBM patent because the claimed technology was “incidental to” or “complimentary to” a financial activity, a standard that the Federal Circuit had since rejected as overly broad in Unwired Planet v. Google.

Network-1 Technologies, Inc. has disclosed a 74.5-percent increase in revenue for 2016 due to license agreements signed throughout the fiscal year, also announcing that its net income increased by five times compared to 2015. Meanwhile, Pendrell Corporation reported its first year of operating income in 2016 as it prepares to de-list from Nasdaq, part of the NPE’s ongoing efforts to shift away from patent assertion in the wake of adverse jury verdicts in its ContentGuard DRM campaign.

Google filed a complaint for declaratory judgment against ContentGuard, a subsidiary of Pendrell Corporation (4:14cv00498). The Google suit was filed in response to ContentGuard’s litigation campaign against makers of mobile handsets that use Google’s media applications. Google is seeking a declaratory judgment that its applications do not infringe ContentGuard’s digital rights patents (6,963,859, 7,523,072, 7,774,280, 8,001,053, 7,269,576, 8,370,956, 8,393,007, 7,225,160, 8,583,556).  ContentGuard sued device makers Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry, Motorola, and Samsung  in December 2013.  (2:14cv00061). 01/31, Northern District of California, 4:14cv00498