Posts in District Courts

Judge Albright Enters New Standing Orders on Motions to Transfer for Conformity with CAFC Mandates

On June 8, U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright of the Western District of Texas signed an amended pair of standing orders regarding motions to transfer filed in patent infringement cases on his docket. The standing orders, which limit venue and jurisdictional discovery as well as require party status reports on motions to transfer, balances judicial efficiency with fairness to patent litigators in a court that has absolutely become one of, if not the, most important court in U.S. patent law today.

Patent Filings Roundup: Light Week at PTAB; Acacia Campaigns Heat Up; Board Institutes Koss IPRs

It was another really light week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), with just 14 new patent filings (two post grant reviews [PGRs] and 12 inter partes reviews [IPRs]). The district court filings kept their usual clip with 65. Four of those IPRs were Micron’s barrage against an Acacia-backed semiconductor non-practicing entity (NPE), and two were Intel filing against a semiconductor entity, Demaray LLC.  New York University filed a new complaint against ResMed; Volkswagen was hit on relatively generic wireless communications patents by Corydoras Technologies (run by Anubias Techs, LLC) on their “SOS” call help buttons in certain Audi and other top-line models. An earlier suit run by Corydoras (or Anubias, all seemingly run by prolific inventor-assertor Iwao Fujisaki, a Japanese citizen) has filed against over a dozen companies, including Amazon, BestBuy, ASUSTek, Sony, ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Apple, and Samsung on a portfolio numbering over 150 U.S. patents.

Five Years after Form 18: Post-Iqbal–Twombly Rule 12(b)(6) and 12(c) Motions to Dismiss Patent Infringement Claims

Today, district courts evaluate whether patent infringement complaints satisfy the plausibility standard under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8 and the Supreme Court’s Iqbal–Twombly standard. Five years after abrogation of Form 18 (a sample patent infringement complaint that was said to be plaintiff-friendly) and nearly 15 years after Twombly, jurisdictional analyses have diverged. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) and 12(c) motions have developed into a targeted, widely-used tactic. Both motions provide defendants with a low-risk, high-reward opportunity. As plaintiff or defendant, start by evaluating the possible-to-plausible pleading spectrum.

Patent Filings Roundup: Funded-NPE Semiconductor Shotgun Petition Backfires; APJ Bucks Board on Fintiv; IP Edge Files Dozens

Happy Memorial Day week. It was a light week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board with 20 filings – 18 inter partes reviews (IPRs) and two post grant reviews (PGRs) – but another heavy one for patent filings in district court (96 complaints), driven primarily by a deluge of new IP Edge complaints (I didn’t count it out, but it looks like more than 50) and a single new massive Humira/Abbvie patent-thicket complaint. The Board issued another five or so Fintiv denials, including one over an International Trade Commission (ITC) date, and only a handful of merits denials; it includes one, listed below, where the Board found merit to some minority of the challenged grounds but nonetheless denied after SAS Institute, Inc. v. Iancu for efficiency. The Magnetar Capital-backed Neodron made it to Markman and settled and then filed another round of enforcement actions against new defendants; and there appears to be burgeoning disagreement at the Board itself in just how precedential the Fintiv analyses are, and whether the Board is overreaching its discretion and misreading its own precedent.

Patent Filings Roundup: In Reversal, COVID Renders W.D. TX Trial Dates Uncertain for Fintiv; Semiconductor NPE Suits and PTAB Challenges on a Roll; Board Issues Order Barring Future Filings

A quiet week resulted in 28 petitions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), mostly related to preexisting suits, though with a perhaps surprising number of semiconductor patents challenged, and three Qualcomm challenges to Monterey Research (i.e., Vector Capital) patents were all instituted; in general, the district courts had a light week with 55 patent filings, many complaints adding new defendants for old campaigns. Some of the recently filed complaints in the longest-running Blitzsafe campaign against were dismissed without prejudice against automotive OEMs; and probably most notable, in a Fintiv denial, a panel cited the global pandemic and the uncertainty of trial schedules in weighing that factor neutrally (while still exercising their discretion for other reasons), as discussed below. Sonos hit back with inter partes reviews (IPRs) against Google patents in their ongoing dispute.

Ninth Circuit Upholds Ruling Against Gil Hyatt: The Paperwork Reduction Act Does Not Apply to Individualized Communications Between The USPTO and Applicants

On May 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, holding that requests for information by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to an individual are exempt from the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). Gilbert P. Hyatt is the named inventor on hundreds of inter-related patent applications that encompass over 100,000 claims. See Generally Hyatt v. U.S. Pat. & Trademark Off., 797 F.3d 1377 (Fed Cir. 2015). Both Hyatt and the American Association for Equitable Treatment (AAET) contend that patent applicants should not have to comply with certain USPTO rules because, they allege, the USPTO is violating the PRA.