Posts Tagged: "High Tech Inventors Alliance"

Comcast and the High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA) filed amicus briefs last week backing a Supreme Court petition brought by Cisco Systems, Inc. last month. The petition asks the Court to consider whether: 1) enhanced damages may be awarded absent a finding of egregious infringement behavior; and 2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) may award enhanced damages without first allowing the district court to exercise its discretion to decide that issue. Cisco filed the petition for a writ of certiorari on March 16, following a November 2021 decision of the Federal Circuit that reversed a district court’s denial of SRI International’s motion to reinstate a jury’s willfulness verdict against Cisco. That ruling restored the district court’s award of enhanced damages and affirmed an award of attorney fees for SRI. The CAFC specifically clarified that its reference to language in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Halo Elecs., Inc. v. Pulse Elecs., Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1923, 1934 (2016) on a first appeal in the case was not meant to create a heightened requirement for willful infringement.

Although Amazon is typically quick to reference its anti-counterfeit policy as proof of its commitment to weeding out inauthentic products from its retail platform, watchdog groups continue to point at major concerns regarding Amazon’s true intentions regarding the sale of counterfeits. Most recent among these is a press release issued on June 5th by The Counterfeit Report which strongly suggests that Amazon and Jeff Bezos have every intention of skirting the rules to continue the financial benefits they receive from the sale of counterfeits. The Counterfeit Report received multiple e-mail responses to counterfeit product issues it presented to Amazon. Those official Amazon e-mails indicate that Bezos received e-mails from The Counterfeit Report and that the e-mail sender was answering on Bezos’ behalf. Amazon’s official stance, as outlined by these e-mails, counterfeit products will continue to be listed on Amazon’s website in countries where the trademark covering the brand isn’t registered.

However, in intellectual property circles, it would be easy question whether Google has lived up to the goal of not doing, or being, evil… Google’s efforts to devalue patent rights is foundational to the company given its long-running penchant for copying the technologies of others for its own business success. Google’s entire targeted advertising operation, which provides upwards of 90 percent of the companies revenues, relies on technologies invented by B.E. Technology in the early 2000s. After B.E. Tech filed a patent infringement suit against Google in 2012, Google filed for inter partes review (IPR) proceedings at the PTAB to challenge those patents.

Congresswoman Lofgren seems quick to forget that she was one of the original co-sponsors of the Innovation Act when it was introduced into the House back in February 2015. Had the Innovation Act passed, it would have required patents challenged in IPR proceedings to be construed in the exact same manner that a district court would have required in a civil action to invalidate the patent. So, it seems Lofgren was for the Phillips standard and eliminating BRI before she was against it.

One of the questions that gets asked this time of year, when the world is busy flipping the calendar from one year to the next, is “What are you looking forward to in the new year?” For patent owners operating in the U.S., however, it may be better to ask, “What are you looking ahead to in 2018?” Looking forward would seem to denote a sense of optimism and such optimism has been in short supply among those in the tech space who don’t have the deep wallets to withstand the costs of pursuing infringers, including those costs incurred by the efficient infringer cartel’s use of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

HTIA’s letter argues that venture capital funding and startup activity have grown in recent years, further proof of their view that the federal government has properly pursued patent system reforms. Using data tools available through PwC MoneyTree, the HTIA cites data indicating that venture capital investments in the U.S. have increased from $32.8 billion in 2012 up to $61 billion in 2016, representing an 86 percent increase in that time. Of course, the letter easily lets go of the fact that the graph shows that venture capital funding actually dropped significantly by about $15 billion between 2015 and 2016 alone, a point the HTIA’s own data graphs prove. As for startup activity, the HTIA collected data from the Kauffman Index of Startup Activity to make its argument that startup activity has increased by 194 percent between 2012 and 2016. Again, there’s no acknowledgement of a concerning recent data point, here the absolute stagnation of new startup activity between 2015 and 2016.

Unfortunately, there’s every indication that today’s event at Brookings will feature more of the same kind of misguided rhetoric on perceived issues with the patent system which don’t truly exist. The evidence for this starts with the moderator for the day’s final roundtable discussion, titled Realigning Incentives to Increase Patent Quality. The moderator for this discussion will be Tim Lee, senior reporter of tech policy for Ars Technica. Lee has written in the past on the effects of “ridiculous patent litigation” and has given space to viewpoints which want to limit patentability in certain sectors, such as in business methods. Lee has also been very critical of appellate court decisions in patent cases in recent years to the point that assertions he’s made on case law regarding the patentability of software inventions border on the ridiculously absurd. This individual, who has a clearly anti-patent viewpoint, will be controlling the discussion during the final panel roundtable on patent policy.

The world of intellectual property law has been abuzz in recent months leading up to oral arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, a case which will determine whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operates in violation of both Article III of the U.S. Constitution and…

John Thorne was VP and deputy general counsel for Verizon during its legal battle against former American cable television company Cablevision where Verizon asserted a series of patents it owned… A closer look into the patents renders some interesting information about the patents Verizon asserted and the company’s legal strategy in the case. Two of the eight patents asserted by Verizon in the District of Delaware weren’t originally invented by Verizon, Bell Atlantic or other any other of Verizon’s predecessor companies; they were acquired from outside entities… And haven’t we been told by the likes of Unified Patents that all patent owners who enforce their patents are patent trolls? One would have to assume if Unified is being logically consistent they would have extraordinary problems with Verizon’s activities particularly here where the patents used to sue Cablevision were acquired and not the subject of in-house innovation.

Eight tech companies owning a collective 115,000 patents announced the establishment of the High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), an organization they claim is “dedicated to supporting balanced patent policy.” According to coverage by Congressional blog TheHill, the formation of the HTIA is intended to further debate on Capitol Hill over patent reform… The members of the alliance are your typical “Who’s Who” of the efficient infringer lobby… Every member of the HTIA, including Adobe, Cisco, Oracle and Salesforce.com all lobbied on issues related to the Innovation Act.