IP Newsflash

A judge in the Eastern District of Virginia recently held that cancellation of independent claims in an inter partes review (IPR) did not preclude the plaintiff from asserting infringement based on the doctrine of equivalents for surviving dependent claims. The district court found that, as a matter of law, amendment-based prosecution history estoppel does not apply based on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s cancellation of all independent claims of the patent.

On June 19, 2017, Northern District of California Judge William Alsup granted-in-part and denied-in-part plaintiff Comcast Cable Communications, LLC’s (“Comcast”) motion to strike defendants OpenTV, Inc. and Nagravision SA’s (collectively “OpenTV”) infringement contentions. The court, however, did not strike with prejudice but instead treated Comcast’s motion as a motion to compel amendment of OpenTV’s infringement contentions so that OpenTV could cure deficiencies.

On April 28, 2017, the District Court for the District of Delaware denied AVM Technologies’ motion for summary judgment because Intel’s non infringement defense based on the reverse doctrine of equivalents requires the Court to resolve disputes of material fact regarding the manner in which Intel’s product functioned relative to the claimed invention.

In a February 11, 2016, decision, Judge Andrews of the District of Delaware granted in part and denied in part a summary judgment motion of noninfringement filed by Defendant Micron Technology, Inc. Plaintiff HSM Portfolio sued Micron over patents relating to image sensors. Specifically, U.S. Patent No. 5,030,853 requires that each inverter in a chain increase in size by “less than a predetermined factor times the width of the N-channel of the immediately preceding inverter stage.” The court found that the patentee intended to use a specific equation in the specification to calculate the “predetermined factor.” Since Plaintiff relied on a different equation for the limitation, the court found that there is no literal infringement. Further, the court concluded that the specification expressly identifies a role for the claim limitation—using the specific equation to calculate the predetermined factor. Thus, the court held that Plaintiff cannot use the doctrine of equivalents to capture the subject matter based on a different equation.