Fed Circ reverses telecom patent ruling, upholds validity
Network infrastructure company CommScope has convinced the US Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit to overturn a telecom patent infringement ruling in favour of Dali Wireless.
A US District Court for the Northern District of Texas jury had found that CommScope had infringed Dali’s US patent 9,031,521 and awarded the company $6,612,321 in damages.
The jury also awarded Dali a further $2,388,002 million for CommScope infringing a related telecom patent - US patent 9,531,473 - as well as $494,903 in prejudgment interest.
Both CommScope and Dali appealed against the Texas court’s entry of judgment after it denied both their motions for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) for a new trial. Both appeals involve several patents and issues regarding validity and infringement.
The Federal Circuit’s opinion handed down on August 24 deals only with validity and alleged infringement of the ‘521 patent.
The ‘521 patent relates to a “System and method for digital memorized predistortion for wireless communication” that requires “switching a controller off” to “disconnect the signal”. The circuit agreed with the district court’s interpretation of this term to mean “[s]witching a controller to a ‘nonoperating state’ to disconnect signal”.
This construction was contended by Dali, but the Federal Circuit ruled that the argument was not “meaningful” as it had only been made in a footnote and was “insufficiently developed”
For the non-infringement issue, the Federal Circuit said that Dali failed to present satisfactory evidence that CommScope’s FlexWave product infringed its patent, presenting no evidence that the switch, the controller, or a combination of the two are put into a “nonoperating state” in the FlexWave.
As a result, the Federal Circuit reversed the denial of CommScope’s motion for JMOL of no infringement.
In all other matters, including the validity of the ‘521 patent, the three-judge panel upheld the Texas courts judgment.
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