Posts Tagged: "JMOL"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a district court’s ruling denying Innovation Sciences’ post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) that claims of three of its patents are not invalid and that Amazon.com, Inc. infringed them, or, alternatively, a new trial. The CAFC said that substantial evidence supported the district court’s finding of anticipation, which Amazon proved via expert testimony relating to a prior art home automation software called HAL.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), with Judge Stoll writing, earlier today reversed a denial of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of no infringement relating to U.S. Patent No. 9,031,521, which is assigned to Dali Wireless, Inc. The court also affirmed the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas on a number of other issues, including its denial of JMOL of invalidity of the ‘521 patent. The ‘521 patent is titled “System and Method for Digital Memorized Predistortion for Wireless Communication.” The patent solves the problem of unintended distortions to a signal caused by power amplifiers used to boost the signal on devices such as mobile phones. The patent does this through “through the use of a feedback loop and lookup tables.”

In Enplas Display Device Corp. v. Seoul Semiconductor Co., the Federal Circuit vacated a $4 million damages award to Seoul Semiconductor Co. (“Seoul”), holding that the district court erred when it denied Enplas Display Device Corp.’s (“Enplas”) motion for judgment as a matter of law that the damages award was not supported by substantial evidence.

The Federal Circuit recently issued a ruling reversing the district court’s denial of Apple Inc.’s (“Apple”) motion for judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”) after finding no reasonable juror could have found infringement based on the evidence presented during the liability phase of trial. The decision erased an awarded over $234 million in damages to Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The Court, however, affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment with respect to invalidity in favor of the patent owner.

“In sum, Defendants showed that epitaxially growing a monocrystalline layer directly on an amorphous layer would have required undue experimentation—indeed, that it is impossible,” the Federal Circuit found. The appellate court also found that Boston University created its own enablement problem by seeking a construction for “a non-single crystalline buffer layer” which included a purely amorphous layer. Along with reversing the district court’s denial of JMOL, the Federal Circuit dismissed-as-moot Boston University’s cross-appeal of the district court’s denial of attorney’s fees and enhanced damages.

On Wednesday, June 27th, a pair of orders of dismissal, one entered in the District of Delaware and the other entered in the Northern District of California, marked the official end of the patent war which played out between consumer tech giants Apple and Samsung for the better part of the past decade. This legal dispute, which was brought to courts in 10 different countries and even went to the U.S. Supreme Court, is notable because it undermines the argument that major patent infringement battles harm tech consumers through added costs and blocking innovation.

In 01 Communique Lab v. Citrix Systems, the Federal Circuit rejected Communique’s appeal. The court properly relied on a comparison of the allegedly infringing GoToMyPC product to the asserted patent claims, as shown by careful jury instructions. Citrix’s comparison to the BuddyHelp prior art, in aid of a legitimate defense, did not cause prejudice to Communique. In reaching its decision, the Court noted that claim terms must be construed the same way for both invalidity and infringement. Thus, if a narrow construction was appropriate for validity in the reexamination to avoid the prior art, a broader construction should not be applied against alleged infringers.

In Promega Corporation v. Life Technologies Corporation, on remand from the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit affirmed district court rulings that granted Life Technologies’ motion for judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”) that Promega Corp. had failed to prove its infringement case under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) and § 271(f)(1), and subsequently denied Promega’s motion for a new trial.

The standards for overturning a jury verdict and Court’s award of enhanced damages are high. The legal standard regarding lost profits is not limited to one third party sale and courts have discretion to determine if substantial evidence supports a finding of lost profits.

Rembrandt sued Samsung for patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas and convinced a jury that Samsung infringed its two asserted patents, awarding $15.7 million in damages. Samsung appealed claim construction, denial of JMOL of obviousness, a Daubert motion on a damages expert, and the refusal to limit damages. The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court’s claim construction and its denial of Samsung’s JMOL motions, affirming those decisions… The Federal Circuit vacated because allowing Rembrandt to “avoid the consequence of its failure to mark undermines the marking statute’s public notice function.” The Federal Circuit remanded to the district court to properly limit damages, and also remanded the question of whether the marking statute applies on a patent-by-patent or claim-by-claim basis because the parties had not squarely addressed the issue during the present appeal.

Core Wireless sued Apple for infringing its patent directed to a cellular network system including a mobile station providing for improved transmission of data packets. The jury found that Apple did not infringe Core Wireless’ patent. At issue on appeal is whether the district court misapplied the magistrate judge’s pretrial claim construction and whether the claim construction adopted by the district court when ruling on Core Wireless’ JMOL was erroneous… Ultimately, the Court concluded that the district court correctly denied Core Wireless’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and properly upheld the jury’s verdict of noninfringement.

This case concerns ongoing disputes between Power Integrations and Fairchild Semiconductors. The companies sued each other in Delaware, each asserting infringement of multiple patents by the other. At issue were power supply controller chips used ubiquitously in modern electronics, the patents related to those chips, and how power is supplied and regulated from the upstream source to the downstream electronic device… Induced infringement requires successful communication between the alleged inducer and the third-party infringer; it is not sufficient in itself that others directly infringed the asserted claims.

In EON Corp. IP Holdings LLC v. Silver Spring Networks, Inc., No. 15-1237, 815 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit reversed a jury verdict and ordered judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”)—without further proceedings in the district court—on an unarticulated claim construction that was raised by neither party below or on appeal. Specifically, the case presents the issue: “Whether the Federal Circuit erred in ordering entry of judgment as a matter of law on a ground not presented in a Rule 50 motion in the district court, even though the ground presented a purely legal question.”

Lifenet’s patent is for plasticized soft tissue grafts used for transplantation in humans. The specification discloses that plasticizers can be removed before implantation, although they need not be, as claim 1 discloses three options for the implanting technician, one option being direct implantation without removing plasticizers. LifeCell’s accused grafts are preserved in a solution prior to implantation, and it is undisputed that significant amounts of plasticizers are removed during this soaking process. During claim construction, the parties disputed the meaning of the term “non-removal.” The district court concluded that construction of this term was unnecessary because it was easily understood by a person of ordinary skill in the art to have its plain meaning.