A Rare Sight: East Texas Judge Grants Motion to Dismiss Patent Infringement Suit

The data are in. As we’ve previously discussed, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas outstrips all others for patent infringement litigation, with approximately 40% of all recent cases filed in that one court. The reasons plaintiffs—especially patent trolls—favor this district have been studied. Most recently, in an August 2015 article, “Forum...

Patent Litigation Doing Just Fine, Especially In Texas

After several years of steady increase in the number of new patent lawsuits filed, 2014 saw a notable decline in the number of new patent suits from 6,082 in 2013 to 5,012 in 2014. Some, such as Gene Quinn of IP Watchdog, saw this 1,000–case decline as evidence that the patent reform enacted in 2011...

East Texas Jury Awards $533 Million In Damages In Apple iTunes Patent Suit

The mega–verdict is back. Patent–assertion entity Smartflash LLC has been awarded $533 million in damages by an east Texas jury in a lawsuit it filed against Apple accusing iTunes of infringing three of its patents. As reported by Reuters, the jury deliberated for eight hours before imposing the half–billion dollar verdict against Apple for willful...

Court Sanctions Niro Patent Law Firm Millions In Fees

The new year has not gotten off to a good start for well–known patent law firm Niro, Haller & Niro of Chicago. As reported by Law.com, the Niro firm is on the hook for millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees in a lawsuit it filed on behalf of Intellect Wireless against HTC. U.S. District Judge...

District of Maine Stays Patent Case Pending Appeal of Reexam Result

In a case closer to home, U.S. District Judge Jon Levy has granted a motion filed by Microsoft to stay a patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by SurfCast, Inc., in which SurfCast has accused Microsoft’s Windows 8 tiles of patent infringement. (Full disclosure: we are co–counsel for Microsoft in the case.) As many patent...

Go Ask Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall

With apologies to Jefferson Airplane, the Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank opinion has grown dramatically in size and strength since it issued in June. In that time, the Federal Circuit and federal district courts from New York to California have decided twenty–two cases of which we are aware. Of those, eighteen have found the...

Judge Doubles Attorneys’ Fees In Patent Case

We wrote in June about the case of Lumen View Technology v. Findthebest, in which Judge Cote of the Southern District of New York awarded attorneys’ fees to FindtheBest under the new standard announced by the Supreme Court in its 2014 opinions in Octane Fitness and Highmark, after Findthebest successfully proved the invalidity of Lumen...

Solicitor General on Induced Infringement; Federal Circuit on Domestic Infringement

A quick recap of two notable developments in the patent law arena this week: At the invitation of the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General has filed a brief for the Government in Commil USA v. Cisco Systems, urging the high court to hear the case. In Commil, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals determined that...

Acacia Subsidiary Hit For $1.4 Million in Attorneys’ Fees

A Delaware federal court has awarded just under $1.4 million in attorneys’ fees to NetApp, Inc., in a patent lawsuit filed by Summit Data Systems. (Hat Tip: the invaluable Docket Navigator) In a recently unsealed order, the court found Summit’s pursuit of its claim against NetApp to be “exceptional” under the rule announced by the...

Form Reform Moves Forward

Way back in 2012, we highlighted the problems caused by Form 18 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which provides a sample complaint for use in filing a patent infringement case. The main problem? The bare–bones form requires a patent–asserter to provide virtually no information about its claims to the defendant. And, under Federal...