HP facing new trial as Fed Circuit cancels patent win
A patent dispute involving Hewlett-Packard (HP) will go back to trial after a mixed ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In a precedential decision issued yesterday, September 24, the Federal Circuit said the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas was wrong in how it constructed certain claims of a patent owned by Network-1 Enterprises.
Network-1 has accused HP of infringing the patent, which covers a system for remotely powering devices over an ethernet network.
HP won an initial victory in the case in 2018, after a jury at the Texas court found the patent to be invalid, and not infringed.
But the Federal Circuit has now ordered a new trial after Network-1 successfully argued that the court wrongly interpreted certain claims of the patent.
According to the judgment, the district court should have construed “main power source” to include AC currents, as well as DC currents.
As the DC-only construction was included as part of the jury’s instructions, Network-1 argued that the finding of infringement was prejudicial and should be struck out. The Federal Circuit agreed, rejecting HP’s argument that the error was inconsequential and didn’t impact on the jury’s findings.
It wasn’t a total victory for Network-1, as the Federal Circuit also overturned the district court and allowed HP to raise challenges to the validity of the patent.
The district court had found that HP was barred from raising some of its validity challenges because it had joined an inter partes review (IPR) of the Network-1 patent requested by technology company Avaya.
According to the Texas court, HP could have raised these arguments as part of the separate IPR proceedings and was therefore barred from doing so at trial.
But the Federal Circuit said this was incorrect, as joined parties aren’t allowed raise arguments in IPRs that were not already raised when the proceedings were instituted.
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