400tmax-istockphoto-com-motorola-1-3
14 September 2017Patents

Mixed result for Motorola Solutions in Federal Circuit ruling

Motorola Solutions has received a mixed result in a recent US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling in a dispute with patent licensing company Intellectual Ventures (IV).

The court handed down a split decision yesterday, September 13, affirming the validity of two of IV’s patents, while rejecting the finding that Motorola Solutions had directly infringed one of the patents.

The ruling followed a patent dispute between the firms over US patent numbers 7,810,144, which relates to a file transfer system between two computers, and 7,120,462, which relates to “docking” a smartphone to a computer/TV.

IV owns both of the patents.

In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Delaware in October 2011, IV claimed that Motorola had infringed both of the patents through the sale of its “mobile products”.

Two months later, Motorola denied the claims of infringement and countersued, alleging that the patents should be deemed invalid as obvious.

In March 2015, the district court conducted three jury trials, the first of which ended in a mistrial.

The second trial related to the infringement and validity of the ‘144 patent, while the third trial retried the infringement and validity of the ‘462 patent.

Motorola moved for judgment as a matter of law in both trials, challenging the jury verdicts.

But, the district court denied Motorola’s motions, a decision affirmed by the Federal Circuit yesterday.

Motorola argued that the district court had erred in denying judgement as a matter of law that the ‘144 patent was invalid for lack of written description and that it was obvious in light of prior art.

The Federal Circuit disagreed with Motorola, finding that the lower court had not erred in denying Motorola’s request.

However, the Federal Circuit did find that IV had failed to prove a directly infringing use.

Circuit Judge Timothy Dyk, on behalf of the court, said: “Since a finding of direct infringement is a predicate to any finding of indirect infringement, we reverse all of the infringement findings.

“We therefore affirm the district court’s judgment in part, reverse in part, and remand for further proceedings on the asserted claims.”

The case is now remanded to the district court for further proceedings on the ‘462 patent with respect to damages.

Did you enjoy reading this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox

Today’s top stories:

Kendall Jenner clothing range at centre of copyright lawsuit

‘Uptown Funk’ copied 80s R&B hit, claims suit

Federal Circuit rejects Uber’s arbitration bid in Waymo fight

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk


More on this story

Patents
17 December 2013   A US appeals court has upheld a ruling from the International Trade Commission which will see Google-owned Motorola Mobility face an import ban on some of its products.
Patents
30 January 2014   Google has sold Motorola Mobility for $2.91 billion to Chinese technology company Lenovo, but will retain the “vast majority” of its former subsidiary’s patents.