English High Court delivers partial win for TQ Delta in patent dispute
The English High Court has delivered a partial win for TQ Delta in a patent dispute between the technology development company and Taiwanese network equipment manufacturer ZyXEL.
In a decision yesterday, March 11, the court ruled that one of TQ Delta’s patents was valid (UK number 1,453,268) and had been infringed by ZyXEL. It found that another patent, (UK number 1,792,430) was obvious in light of prior art.
Both the ‘268 and ‘430 patents relate to digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. DSL technology is used to provide broadband internet to homes over standard telephone lines.
The technology covered by the ‘430 patent related to cyclic redundancy checksums (CRCs) which are used to detect errors in a received stream of data. The patent’s claims cover a problem with a DSL line, such as noise an accuracy, and a solution to address that problem.
According to the ruling, “TQ Delta accepted that once the problem addressed by the patent is known, the claimed solution is obvious”.
TQ Delta contended that the inventive aspect of the ‘430 patent lay in the identification of the problem.
In his decision, presiding judge Henry Carr recognised it was possible for the inventive aspect of a patent to be the identification of a problem even when the solution was obvious.
But he said that “in a field where the person skilled in the art regularly confronts technical problems and is used to solving them, if a real problem exists, she or he is likely to be aware of it”.
He also rejected the idea that "superhuman ability was required to identify the problem from the standard", nor did it require any "cherry picking".
In the case of the ‘268 patent, Carr determined that it was not obvious over the prior art and that it had been infringed by ZyXEL.
As a result of yesterday’s rulings, both parties will now move forward to a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) trial in September.
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