The Federal Circuit s recent
Uniloc 2017 v. Facebook
Inc. decision is a mixed bag of good and bad news for both
patent owners and
inter partes review petitioners. On the
plus side for patent owners (but not for petitioners), the Federal
Circuit determined that the so-called No Appeal
provision does not necessarily apply to 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(1),
and, therefore, a patent owner may still appeal a Patent Trial and
Appeal Board determination that a petitioner is not estopped from
maintaining an IPR under § 315(e)(1). However, the Federal
Circuit also provided petitioners with good news, ruling that one
petitioner s joining of another petitioner s instituted IPR
Vishay Intertechnology (all named in an
amended complaint filed in the original Digi-Key suit).
The single patent asserted throughout (6,861,270), generally related to manufacturing
a semiconductor with gallium nitride wherein a second layer of that
material, among other things, is a light emitting
layer , issued to Nitride Semiconductors in March 2005. It has
an estimated priority date in June 2000. The plaintiff pleads that
it was founded in 2000 out of the Nitride Semiconductor
Laboratory at Tokushima University in Japan , that it
developed the world s first UV LED in 2000 , and
that it continues to make and sell epitaxial wafers, UV LED
chips, UV LED lamps, and UV LED appliances . Currently
The jury found that Samsung infringed a single claim from each
of the 338 and 311 patents, respectively awarding $27.3M
and $35.4M in damages as to those patents. The jury further found
that the company s infringement of the 311 patent had been
willful. However, the jury also determined that the asserted claims
from the 450 patent (claims 4 and 5) are invalid, precluding
an infringement finding. To dig further into that Eastern District
of Texas result, see Texas Jury Returns $62.7M Infringement Verdict in
Solas OLED Trial Against Samsung (March 2021).
The -185 case was filed in the Western District of Texas (and is
The Situation
Smart contracts are often mentioned in blockchain-themed patent
applications and recited in claims. However, Examiners without a
thorough understanding of this concept or unfamiliar with
blockchain technology often equate smart contracts with legal or
commercial contracts stored on blockchains. As a result, the
Examiners may find claims directed to merely applying the
blockchain technology to execute legal or commercial contracts, for
example, as part of a commerce system, like
hedging.
See, e.g.,
Bilski v. Kappas, 561, U.S. 593, 611
(2010)).
Without detailed explanations of smart contract set
forth in the specification, patent prosecutors may find themselves
in anuphill battle against the abstract idea finding. What makes it
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After a purported five years of unsuccessful negotiations, Sol IP, LLC has thrown the patent book at
Qualcomm (6:21-cv-00270), accusing the chipmaker of
infringing 28 patents, broadly directed to wireless communications,
including LTE, 5G, and Wi-Fi technologies. The plaintiff pleads
that it is an intellectual-property licensing company
organized and existing as a limited liability company under the
laws of Virginia that holds an exclusive license to the
Asserted Patents from Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute (ETRI), a South Korean research institution, which transferred to Sol IP all substantial rights in those