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8 February 2019Patents

Fujifilm urges Fed Circuit to overturn PTAB in Sony battle

Tokyo-headquartered  Fujifilm has asked the  US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions which handed victory to Sony, in a patent battle between the two competitors.

On Monday, February 4, Fujifilm filed two notices of appeal, informing the PTAB that it had requested the Federal Circuit decide whether the board had erred in finding that US patent numbers 7,115,331 and 6,896,959 were patentable.

The Federal Circuit docketed the appeals yesterday, February 7.

Both of Sony’s patents cover magnetic tape media, which are used in a range of equipment, including cassette tapes, floppy disks and videos.

According to the PTAB, Fujifilm had failed to prove that the patents were unpatentable in light of a range of prior art.

Along with challenging this finding, Fujifilm has also asked the Federal Circuit to consider whether the PTAB erred in its construction of the term “volume concentration”, which is recited in some of the patents’ claims.

Fujifilm’s appeals are the latest development in a lengthy dispute between the two rivals centering on magnetic tape media.

Back in December 2016, Sony brought a  patent lawsuit against Fujifilm at the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, accusing Fujifilm of infringing four of its patents (two of the patents being ‘331 and ‘959).

According to that suit, in the early 2000s, Sony began “introducing magnetic tape cartridge products in a number of different formats,” including tapes compliant with the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format specification.

Sony claimed that authorisation to make and sell LTO tape products is contingent on fulfilling certain conditions, such as the requirement to license certain patents.

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More on this story

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12 March 2018   The US International Trade Commission has ruled that Japan-based Sony must stop importing products into the US that infringe a Fujifilm patent.
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10 May 2017   Sony has again sued rival Fujifilm for patent infringement over use of magnetic tape media.
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26 March 2019   The US International Trade Commission has issued an order preventing Fujifilm from importing certain magnetic tape cartridges following a section 337 patent infringement complaint brought by Sony.