Posts Tagged: "verizon"

CAFC Affirms Eastern Texas Rulings of Noninfringement for Telecom Companies

On October 12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued two related precedential opinions affirming the decisions of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, holding that neither Verizon Wireless and Sprint Communications nor Nokia Solutions infringed Traxcell Technologies LLC’s patents. raxcell sued Verizon and Sprint for infringing four of its patents, all of which share a specification and a 2001 priority date. The four patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,977,284 (the ‘284 patent), 9,5,10,320 (the ‘320 patent), 9,642,024 (the ‘024 patent), and 9,549,388 (the ‘388 patent). In a separate suit, Traxcell sued Nokia for infringing the ‘284, the ‘320, and the ‘024 patents.

The claims of three of the four patents at issue—the ‘284, 320, and ‘024 patents (collectively the SON patents)—are related to self-optimizing network (SON) technology for making “corrective actions” to improve communications between a wireless device and a network.

This Week in Washington IP: NASA’s Moon Mission, Protecting Internet Consumers and Fintech AI Innovations

This week in the nation’s capital, subcommittees in the House of Representatives will hold a series of technology-related hearings focused on online competition in data privacy, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing in the financial sector, Internet consumer protections and NASA’s goal to speed up the return of a manned mission to the moon. The House Investigations Subcommittee will also hold a field hearing outside of D.C. exploring innovation in lead mitigation employed within the state of New Jersey. Elsewhere in D.C., the R Street Institute will discuss their theory on the national security implications of patents, the Brookings Institution will look at the impact of digital technologies on African entrepreneurship and the American Enterprise Institute hosts an event exploring the impact of globalization and robotic innovation on the workforce.

Huawei’s Patents are Not the Enemy

Here we go again! Another day, another ridiculous attack on the U.S. patent system. This time the attack comes from the R Street Institute, who claims that patents are too strong and are inhibiting American companies from achieving success in the race for leadership in the 5G marketplace and continued leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI). R Street will hold a panel discussion on their wildly outlandish theory, for which they can’t possibly have any factual support, on Tuesday, October 15, in the Capitol Visitor Center. In the announcement they claim that patents are inhibiting American companies because Chinese telecommunications company, Huawei, asserted more than 200 patents against Verizon Communications earlier this year. Therefore—and ipso facto—patents are too strong and American companies are suffering. There may be legitimate security concerns around Huawei’s infrastructure, but to suggest that the company’s patents are at the root of these threats is in a word—Absurd!

Restrictive IP Policies Could Limit Innovation Opportunity

In the wake of fraudulent IP applications from foreign nations—namely China—the United States has recently enacted or called for policies that require foreign entities to complete more thorough IP applications. For instance, in August, we heard about the new USPTO rule requiring all foreign trademark applicants and registrants to be represented by a licensed U.S. attorney when filing. According to the USPTO website, this is intended to “increase USPTO customer compliance with U.S. trademark law and USPTO regulations, improve the accuracy of trademark submissions to the USPTO and safeguard the integrity of the U.S. trademark register.” And then just last week, news broke that the USPTO had issued new instructions requiring trademark examiners to ask applicants for proof of legal residence in the United States to enforce this new rule (note: these instructions have since been rolled back). The reasoning behind these legislations, or proposed legislations, seems to be that by making the IP application process more involved and more challenging, the USPTO will limit the number of foreign IP applications received—and therefore the number of fraudulent applications received. This will undoubtedly work, but is it the right approach?

Other Barks & Bites for Friday, February 22

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Chinese and U.S. governments hash out intellectual property issues; a prominent New York City politician joins the effort to break the patent on Gilead’s Truvada; Qualcomm tells the ITC that Apple’s design around undermines the agency’s finding that an exclusion order shouldn’t be entered against infringing iPhones; the Fortnite copyright cases take a new turn; Babybel loses the trademark on its red wax cheese coating in the UK; Fisker & Paykel and ResMed settle their worldwide patent dispute; Facebook could face major FTC fines for payments from children playing video games on the platform; and reports indicate that Pinterest is pursuing an initial public offering.