Tag Archives: patent litigation

 ‘Collateral estoppel’ means that when a judge, jury or other tribunal finally decides an issue in litigation between two parties, then the decision controls the same issue between the same parties in subsequent litigation. The losing party can appeal a decision (usually), but once the appeals from the decision are exhausted the issue is decided […]

VirnetX Holding Corporation is a 20-employee, publicly-traded (NYSE: VHC) corporation with a market capitalization of $505 million and with unusual family compensation.  VirnetX owns 190 patents for some of the key technologies of the last fifteen years, including technologies used for Skype, iMessage, FaceTime and virtual private networks. VirnetX is in the business of licensing those patent […]

Court Oder to Stop a Patent Infringer If an infringer copies your patented invention, a judge should make them stop, right?   Not necessarily. An order from a judge directing someone to do or not do something (such as to stop infringing your patent) is called an ‘injunction.’  Not too long ago, if a federal judge […]

The Eastern District of Texas is a large rural Federal judicial district.  The biggest city is about the size of Allentown, Pennsylvania.  Not what you would expect of a hotbed of patent litigation.  Nonetheless, the Eastern District of Texas has dominated patent infringement litigation for years.  In the first quarter of 2017, patent plaintiffs filed […]

Now For a Riddle: When is a Defense not a Defense?… (Pause for effect)… Answer – When the Supreme Court says it’s not. Not so many years ago, patents were very powerful.  A patent owner was entitled to a court order stopping infringement almost as a matter of course whenever the patent owner proved infringement. […]

Speaking of Apple v Samsung, the Supreme Court issued its decision in this long-running litigation about design patents.  To recap, Samsung copied the design of Apple’s iPhone and infringed Apple’s design patents in the process.  There is no question whether the Apple patents are valid – they are.  There is no question whether Samsung infringed […]

In many areas of the law, excessive delay in pursuing a right can be a defense in a later lawsuit.  The defense is known as ‘laches’ and is based on fairness – by delaying the litigation, the person asserting the right has acquiesced in the other party’s conduct.  Historically, the fairness-based laches defense applies only […]

for the Supreme Court to restore some balance to the patent system. The power of patents has eroded over the last decade, with the Supreme Court concluding that an infringer can only be enjoined from infringing in rare circumstances (Ebay v MercExchange) that pretty much any process that does not require a machine is not patentable […]

  If you have patents or have been involved in patenting, then you have heard about the  difference between design and utility patents.  The explanation probably went something like this: A utility patent protects how a thing does what it does.  A design patent protects the appearance of the thing. And: A design patent cannot […]

The first general rule is that whenever the Supreme Court accepts a patent case, it will reverse the lower court decision and change the law.  The second general rule is that whenever the Supreme Court decides a patent case the law is left in worse shape than it was before. This time, the Supremes have […]