WiLAN loses patent dispute after failing to produce evidence
A US district court has ruled in favour of Japan-based company Sharp Electronics in a patent infringement claim brought by WiLAN.
In a judgment on February 14, the US District Court for the District of Delaware said WiLAN failed to provide admissible evidence of infringement of one of its patents and rejected its claim.
WiLAN claimed Sharp Electronics’ infringed three claims of one of its patents (US number 6,359,654) which are all methods of displaying interlaced video data on non-interlaced monitors.
It said that the manufacture of “system on chips” (SoCs) used within Sharp Electronics’ products performed claims covered by its patent.
For the court to rule in favour of WiLAN, the Ontario-based technology company had to provide the “Register Transfer Level” (RTL) as evidence. This is the source code that provides the blueprint to manufacture the hardware of the SoCs.
It said WiLAN had “ample time and opportunities over years of litigation to obtain evidence of infringement”, but it had failed to do so in a timely manner.
The court said without the source code there was no proof that the SoCs performed the patented claims, and a jury could not find that Sharp Electronics had infringed WiLAN’s patent.
According to the judgment, WiLAN had failed to obtain evidence on time because third-party manufacturers who have control over the code did “not easily and voluntarily” produce it.
Gianni Cutri, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and counsel for Sharp Electronics said: “Wi-LAN’s assertions of infringement in this case have long suffered from serious evidentiary and substantive problems and we are very pleased with the court’s decision confirming that our client does not infringe.”
Additionally, the court rejected WiLAN’s argument that Sharp Electronics directly infringed its patent because it controls “all aspects of the hardware” within its products.
The court said if anyone has control, it would be the SoC manufacturers and not Sharp Electronics, because it does not have control or access to the source code.
It said there was no evidence that Sharp Electronics has any control over the functionality of the SoCs.
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