Supreme Court hears LG-Quanta patent case
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard  arguments in a dispute between LG Electronics Inc   and Quanta on Wednesday that will either expand or contract the  rights of a patent holder.
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The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a legal case with far-reaching implications for the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
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Justices are expected to hear arguments Tuesday in a case that could have broad implications for the tech industry.
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"This is another example where Qualcomm has effectively copied Nokia's innovations."  Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile phone maker, said Monday it filed a patent infringement countersuit against Qualcomm in an ongoing multinational legal battle over wireless technology.Nokia, which filed the lawsuit in a Texas district court, is seeking damages and injunctive relief. The lawsuit deals with claims of unauthorized use of Nokia's Brew and MediaFlo patents, which allow fast, high-quality transfers of audio and video multimedia to wireless subscribers.In April, Qualcomm Inc., the world's No. 2 chipmaker for mobile phones which licenses its technology patents, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Texas against Nokia, allegedly involving certain types of mobile software download and execution environments. Read more
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could make it harder to obtain patents, with technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. supporting a change. The case, involving a patent on gas pedals for vehicles, has the Supreme Court examining how lower courts arrive at a decision that an invention was obvious, and therefore not patentable. In the case, Teleflex Inc. and Technology Holding Co., holders of the electronic gas pedal patent, sued KSR International Co. for patent infringement, but the defendant argued the courts should invalidate the gas pedal invention for obviousness. After oral arguments Tuesday, some patent lawyers said they expected the Supreme Court to overturn a 4-decade-old approach to deciding obviousness often called the teaching-suggestion-motivation test. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used this test, saying that there must be some proven teaching, suggestion or motivation to lead a person of ordinary skill to combine "prior art" products into a new invention for that invention to be declared obvious. Other patent lawyers said they expect little movement from the Supreme Court, although any change would have a huge impact on patent holders. If the Supreme Court throws out the motivation test, all current patents could be suspect, said Paul Andre, an intellectual property lawyer with Perkins Coie LLP, in an interview. A change in the motivation test could mean fewer patent infringement cases brought by patent holders, because they would fear that courts would rule their patents invalid, he said. "The alleged infringer would have an easier time challenging a patent," he added. But most patent lawyers seem to believe the Supreme Court won't change the law, with the court last acting on the obvious standard in a 1966 ruling, he said. "If the Supreme Court wanted to do it, they'd have changed it by now," he said. But justices asked several questions about the obviousness standard, with Chief Justice John Roberts suggesting courts needed more flexibility to determine obviousness. The court will likely require the Federal Circuit to come up with a new standard, said Sharon Barner, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley and Lardner LLP, in an interview apart from the court hearing. Cisco and Microsoft, joined by three other companies, filed a brief in the case saying the motivation standard makes it too hard to prove obviousness, leading to bad patents. Microsoft and Cisco have been sued for "allegedly infringing dozens of questionable patents," wrote their attorney Peter Sullivan, of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed LLP. The motivation test "establishes too lenient a standard for patentability, and it has had a stifling effect on true innovation because it encumbers ideas well beyond the limits imposed by Congress for patentable inventions," Sullivan wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court. But a group of patent lawyers filed a brief opposing a change in the law, saying a change in the obviousness standard could make it difficult to get a patent on any invention that combines old products. The current standard is established and well-thought, wrote lawyers for the American Intellectual Property Law Association. Without the motivation test, there's no standard to determine obviousness, said Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance, in an interview. "Things are often obvious in hindsight when they weren't that obvious," he said. "Big un-innovative ... are trying to make the invention game a king's sport because they hate having to compensate inventors."
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Nokia and Qualcomm have entered a new round in their high-stakes fight over patent royalties, with the Finnish handset maker landing its first counter-punch.
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The U.S. Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear appeals in two cases concerning the right of the entertainment industry to subpoena file-traders and whether telecommunication companies have to share their networks with startup competitors.ADVERTISEMENTSBC Case Study: Crate & BarrelWhat sold them on improving their network? A system that could cut management costs from the get-go. Find out more.
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Patent infringement found; split decision sends part of case back to lower court.
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The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider a case likely to have a significant impact on the music, video and electronics industries.
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There was scant consolation for chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) in a long-awaited court decision on its patent dispute with rival Broadcom (BRCM). On June 7, the U.S.
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The International Trade Commission will investigate whether Qualcomm is following a court order in a patent suit.
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Nokia, the world's top cell phone  maker, has filed a patent counter-suit against Qualcomm Inc in  a Texas court, seeking damages and an injunction against the  U.S. chip maker.
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U.S. Supreme Court justices on  Wednesday expressed doubts about whether Microsoft Corp.   should be liable for infringing AT&T Inc.   patents in Windows software sold overseas, a case that could  determine the reach of American patents in foreign markets.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia and Qualcomm have entered a new round in their high-stakes fight over patent royalties, with the Finnish handset maker landing its first counter-punch. The Finnish company has responded to theÂ patent infringement lawsuit filed by QualcommÂ in the Western District of Wisconsin on April 2 by claiming that its products aren't infringing, and filing its first patent counter-suit against the U.S. chip company, Nokia said Thursday. Nokia's suit seeks damages and also an injunction against certain of Qualcomm's chip sets. "We're confident that our products don't infringe the two Qualcomm patents that are in suit and, in fact, we believe these patents are invalid," a Nokia spokeswoman said. The initial lawsuit filed by Qualcomm in Wisconsin concerns two patents covering speech encoders used in certain GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) mobile phones to digitize audio signals for transmission. In its counter-suit,Â Nokia accuses Qualcomm of infringingÂ six of its patents, relating primarily to multiband and multimode technologies that reduce handset and chip set size, cost, and power consumption. Standards bodies divide patents touching on the technologies they define into two categories: those essential to a standards-compliant product, and those that only cover a particular implementation of the standard. The six patents Nokia accuses Qualcomm of infringing are implementation patents, the spokeswoman said. Companies with essential patents included in a standard agree to license the technology under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms, but the companies can decide whether or not to license implementation patents to others, she said. Qualcomm had no agreement to use the six Nokia implementation patents, she said. Qualcomm has copied these innovations and made them available to its chip set customers, according to the Nokia spokeswoman. In April, Qualcomm filed another lawsuit against Nokia in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The separate lawsuit deals with three patents related to the downloading of applications and other digital content over GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks, two technologies for speeding the transmission of packet data in GSM networks. The Nokia spokeswoman declined to comment on the Texas lawsuit. Over the past 19 months, Qualcomm has filed 11 patent litigation cases against Nokia but in none of these cases has the company had any success, according to the spokeswoman. Legal disputes over mobile phone patents have grown in recent years, largely because of opportunities to generate significant revenue from licensing inventions to others. Numerous patent licensing disputes have accompanied mobile phone technologies such as GSM and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), and are expected to flow from 4G (fourth-generation) systems now under development. In a interviewÂ earlier this month, Bill Davidson, senior vice president of investor relations and international marketing at Qualcomm, said the company has more than 1,000 essential patents for OFDM, OFDMA (OFDM Access) and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technologies, all of which form the foundation of new 4G technologies, whether WiMax, LTE (Long-Term Evolution) or UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband). Â
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In another indication that one of the most heated intellectual property disputes in the history of telecommunications could end up a near-wash for both sides, a US District Court ruled late last week that two major handset manufacturers will be allowed to export devices with Broadcom chips to the US, despite a pending patent infringement lawsuit from Qualcomm.
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HELSINKI/WASHINGTON  - The U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday opened a hearing in a case in which U.S. chip maker Qualcomm Inc  accused Nokia  of infringing some of its patents in cellphones using the GSM technology.
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(InfoWorld) - A German court stayed a patent-infringement case that Qualcomm filed against Nokia, as hearings regarding a similar case in the U.S. International Trade Commission suit continue. On Tuesday, the District Court of Dusseldorf, Germany, ordered a stay of proceedings until further notice based on a request by Qualcomm, Nokia said. A hearing in that case had been scheduled for Tuesday. Meanwhile, hearings for theÂ patent-infringement case that Qualcomm brought against NokiaÂ in the U.S. ITC started on Monday and will last until Sept. 24. At issue are patents Qualcomm owns related to power control used in EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Environment) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). The initial ITC complaint included six Qualcomm patents, but Qualcomm later reduced the complaint to cover just three. Qualcomm initially declared one of the patents as essential to the standards, but later withdrew the essentiality declaration, according to Nokia. Qualcomm did identify the patent as one that may be essential, but after further investigation determined that it wasn't, said Alex Rogers, legal counsel for Qualcomm. But that issue is irrelevant to this case, he said, which charges Nokia with patent infringement. The hearings this week are dedicated to Qualcomm testimony and has included participation by Chuck Wheatley and Ana Weiland, former Qualcomm developers who worked on the patented technology, Rogers said. Nokia will also have five days to present its witnesses. The mobile giant will argue that it does not infringe on the patents and that the patents are invalid, it said. The judge will issue an initial determination after the hearings are complete. The commission then has an opportunity to accept or modify the judge's decision and issue a final determination. The U.S. ITC case is one ofÂ several ongoing suits between Qualcomm and Nokia. In August,Â Nokia asked the ITCÂ to launch a separate investigation, charging Qualcomm with patent infringement. In June, Nokia charged Qualcomm with infringing on patents in its MediaFlo and Brew products. In a statement in May, Nokia said that Qualcomm has filed 11 patent suits against Nokia in just over a year and a half. The ongoing dispute between the companies likely stems from their failure to renegotiate their patent licensing agreement that expired in April. Nokia has said that it believes Qualcomm, which is well-known for its development of the CDMA wireless technologies, charges more than fair and reasonable rates when licensing the technology to be used in standards-based equipment. In a separate intellectual-property battle, theÂ ITC recently banned the importÂ of mobile phones with certain Qualcomm chips, based on a case Broadcom filed.