Both plaintiff Opticurrent, LLC and defendant Power Integrations have filed Federal Circuit appeals after District Judge Edward M. Chen, in a June decision, trimmed an earlier jury award to Opticurrent from $6.7M to $1.2M. In posttrial briefs, Opticurrent had defended the jury’s identification of a three percent royalty rate and its application to a base that included all products that ended up in the US, even if imported by third parties. The NPE relied on the same theory used in the Carnegie Mellon v. Marvell case, which saw damages awarded on such imported products based on the defendant’s original, domestic design work. The court distinguished the case before it from Carnegie Mellon based on a pivotal jury finding: that Opticurrent did not prove inducement of infringement. As a result, Judge Chen applied a six percent factor to the relevant Power Integrations sales figures to limit the royalty base to direct sales into the US by the defendant.

District Judge Rodney Gilstrap has transferred the only active case in the campaign of Opticurrent, LLC from the Eastern District of Texas (2:16-cv-00325) to the Northern District of California (5:17-cv-03597). In late December, the defendant, Power Integrations filed a motion to transfer venue for convenience; when the US Supreme Court decision on patent venue issued in May 2017, Opticurrent notified the court that the decision was not applicable to the pending motion to transfer for convenience and that Power Integrations had waived its right to contest the propriety of venue in the Eastern District because the defendant “did not file a motion alleging improper venue under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3) with its original answer”. Power Integrations disagreed, arguing that its denial, in the answer, to Opticurrent’s venue allegations, in the complaint, preserved the issue. Judge Gilstrap sidestepped the issue by granting Power Integrations a convenience transfer a couple of days later in a relatively spare order.

Opticurrent, LLC has filed its first lawsuit, asserting a single patent (6,958,623), generally related to a three-terminal non-inverting transistor switch with low current leakage, against Power Integrations and distributor Mouser Electronics (2:16-cv-00325). AC-DC converters made by Power Integrations are accused of infringement.