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15 August 2017Patents

BT and Valve patent clash dismissed

A judge has dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit between UK telecommunications company BT and games developer Valve.

BT sued Valve back in July last year, accusing the developer of wilfully infringing four patents: US numbers 6,578,079; 6,334,142; 6,694,375; and 7,167,142.

Valve’s distribution platform for video games, Steam, is the largest in the world.

According to the claim, Valve’s Steam Library, Steam Chat, Steam Messaging and Steam Broadcasting had infringed the patents.

Filed at the US District Court for the District of Delaware, the suit alleged that BT had notified Valve of its infringing conduct and requested the games developer enter into discussions with it.

“Nonetheless, Valve has failed to respond to BT’s correspondence at all, and chosen instead to continue to infringe the patents-in-suit wilfully and wantonly,” said BT.

On Friday, August 11, District Judge Leonard Stark ordered the dismissal of the case.

The infringement claims raised by BT and Valve’s counterclaims were dismissed with prejudice.

Each party will bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs.

This wasn’t the first time BT had brought legal proceedings against a US-based company.

In December 2011, BT sued Google and its Motorola Mobility subsidiary over six mobile technology patents that use the Android operating system.

Two years later, Google countersued over four patents relating to technology covering conference calling and quality of service insurance.

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2 September 2016   UK telecommunications company British Telecom (BT) has filed a patent infringement suit against game developer Valve, claiming it has willfully infringed four patents.
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14 February 2013   Google has sued telecoms provider BT and its subsidiaries BT Conferencing, BT Americas, BT INS and Ipanema Technologies over four patents relating to its conference calling and quality of service insurance technologies.
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