NPE sues Louis Vuitton over smartwatch patents
Louis Vuitton North America is facing a patent infringement lawsuit from a non-practising entity (NPE) over its smart watches.
In the suit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas yesterday, April 15, Semcon IP alleged that Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Horizon smartwatch infringed four of its patents (US numbers 7,100,061; 7,596,708; 8,566,627; and 8,806,247).
The patents cover “adaptive power control” (APC) technology, and were assigned to Semcon IP in 2015.
The technology includes “apparatuses and methods for controlling the power used by a computer, and specifically, the adjustment of the clock frequency and voltage supply to a processor”, the suit said.
The NPE claimed that Louis Vuitton’s smart watches, including the Tambour Horizon, used “infringing technology”, which it claimed included chips made by Qualcomm.
Qualcomm’s chips enable dynamic clock/frequency and voltage scaling (DCVS/DFVS), which Qualcomm says is a “technique used to adjust the frequency and voltage of the power equation to deliver the needed performance at the ideal power level”.
Semcon IP said that Louis Vuitton had sold products which include “infringing technology, such as Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs and associated software that use DCVS and/or DVFS for power management”.
Qualcomm was not named as a party in the suit.
Semcon IP said Louis Vuitton had been wilfully infringing the patents since May 2018, when the NPE filed a suit against the fashion brand’s parent company.
That lawsuit, asserting the same four patents, was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice last Friday, April 12.
Semcon IP, a subsidiary of Quest Patent Research Corporation, is seeking a permanent injunction preventing any infringement of its patents, and an award of treble damages.
WIPR has contacted Louis Vuitton and Qualcomm for comment.
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