Showing 1 - 10 of 18 news articles
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Judge Gilstrap Grapples with Another Foreign Law Issue
Patent Litigation Feature
Earlier this year, Northern District of California Judge Jon S. Tigar rejected an unusual argument from plaintiff Lauri Valjakka urging the court to apply Finnish common law concerning the appropriation of abandoned shipwrecks and piles of discarded leather scraps to save his case. Then, Eastern District of Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap held that French law, which follows “the privity rule”, applies to the contract giving rise to a FRAND obligation; and that Samsung provided insufficient evidence under French law that plaintiff G+ Communications LLC could be considered the alter ego of ZTE. For the latest brush with foreign law in domestic patent cases it is back to Judge Gilstrap, who just denied a motion to dismiss on a license defense that brushed up against a ruling under German law.
March 8, 2024
WiLAN Sub Sues Dell
New Patent Litigation
Universal Connectivity Technologies Inc. (UCT) has followed up its late September 2023 cases filed separately against HP in the Western District of Texas and Lenovo in the Eastern District of Texas with a new suit against Dell (1:23-cv-01506), in the former venue. Received in a portfolio from Lattice Semiconductor in November 2021, the same eight patents are asserted against Dell, with infringement allegations targeting the provision of a wide array of devices, including laptops, desktops, monitors, docking stations, and adapters, that support various versions and features of the DisplayPort and USB standards.
December 16, 2023
Second WiLAN Subsidiary Launches First Litigation in September
New Patent Litigation
Universal Connectivity Technologies Inc. (UCT) has filed its first litigation, over patents from a portfolio received from Lattice Semiconductor in November 2021. The plaintiff accuses HP (1:23-cv-01177) and Lenovo (2:23-cv-00449) of infringing the same eight patents via alleged support for various standards associated with DisplayPort and USB (e.g., USB 3.0, 4.0, and -C) by a wide array of devices, including adapters, computers, docking stations, laptops, and/or monitors.
October 1, 2023
WiLAN Subsidiary Sues AMD in West Texas
New Patent Litigation
Eridanus Technologies, Inc. (ETI) received five patents from STMicroelectronics back in February 2015, but the Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN) subsidiary filed what appears to be its first suit from that received portfolio just this past week. ETI accuses AMD (1:23-cv-01036) of infringing two of those patents—one generally related to reducing current leakage in logic devices; the other, to managing power supply to a system-on-chip (SoC)—through the provision of various computer processors (i.e., APUs and CPUs). The case comes after big changes were announced at WiLAN earlier this summer.
September 4, 2023
WiLAN’s $85.2M Damages Verdict From Second Apple Trial Cannot Stand, Rules Federal Circuit
Patent Litigation Feature
The Federal Circuit has overturned an $85.2M damages award against Apple in its ongoing litigation with Quarterhill Inc. subsidiary Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN). On February 4, the appellate court issued a precedential opinion holding that WiLAN’s damages expert in a January 2020 damages retrial used a flawed methodology that was “untethered to the facts of this case”. This decision marks the second time that this same lawsuit has seen the reversal of a significant damages award, following a 2019 ruling from District Judge Dana M. Sabraw that threw out a prior $145.1M award for failure to improperly apportion the infringing features. The Federal Circuit also reversed a partial summary judgment of noninfringement from that first trial, among the other issues decided.
February 4, 2022
WiLAN Smart TV Litigation Hits an Evidentiary Wall on Appeal
Patent Litigation Feature
The Federal Circuit has just upheld the dismissal of two Quarterhill Inc. smart TV cases against Sharp and Vizio after rejecting evidence central to its infringement claims as inadmissible. In an April 6 precedential decision (2020-1041), the appellate court agreed with Delaware District Judge Leonard Stark that plaintiff Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN), Quarterhill’s licensing arm, could not rely on certain documents obtained through litigation: an alleged printout of certain source code for the video chipsets at issue and related explanatory declarations. WiLAN had offered that evidence in lieu of the source code itself, which the NPE had been unable to procure from the chipsets’ third-party manufacturers through discovery.
April 9, 2021
Quarterhill Reports a “Strong” 2020 Amid the COVID Recession, Including Several Settlements and Multiple Large Portfolio Acquisitions
COVID-19, Patent Market, Patent Watch
Quarterhill Inc. released its Q4 and 2020 financial results this week, reporting decreased year-over-year patent licensing revenue but several new license agreements as well as multiple acquisitions of large operating company portfolios. The company’s slower fourth quarter followed a surge in licensing revenue in Q3, which management characterized at the time as Quarterhill’s “best quarter” in three years.
March 12, 2021
Quarterhill Acquires More IBM Assets, Signs Deal with Intel
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Following the acquisition earlier this year of hundreds of US patent assets from IBM, Quarterhill Inc. announced on September 30 that it has received an additional portfolio of patents from the company. Also this week, Quarterhill disclosed having entered into a patent license agreement with Intel, resolving litigation filed against Intel as well as HP and HP Enterprise (HPE).
October 2, 2020
Quarterhill Reports Lower Revenue, Slower Deals, in Q2
COVID-19, Patent Market, Patent Watch
Quarterhill Inc. released its second-quarter earnings on August 6, reporting a dip well below $1M in licensing revenue as well as delays in its deal-making process due to COVID-19. While staying relatively quiet on the litigation front so far this year, Quarterhill did receive “a favorable update” during Q2 in its ongoing litigation against Apple, which brought the total final judgment in Wi-LAN Inc.’s favor to $108.98M USD.
August 17, 2020
Patent Deals Signed in Q4 Leave Quarterhill with “Roughly $90M” in Cash on Hand
Patent Market, Patent Watch
This past week, Quarterhill Inc. announced its financial results for the three- and twelve-month periods ended December 31, 2019, reporting an increase of more than 280% in year-over-year patent licensing revenue. In Thursday’s earnings call, Board Chairman John Gillberry told investors that Quarterhill’s patent licensing business is “alive and well”, with patent deals signed in Q4 having increased the company’s cash balance of $68.6M (as of December 31, 2019) to “roughly $90M” (as of February 27).
February 28, 2020