Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Staff filed a response that attacks the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Statement of Interest in the FTC v. Qualcomm case. (See May 3, 2019 post on DOJ Statement of Interest).  FTC Staff stated that it did not request the DOJ filing, which FTC Staff called untimely.  FTC Staff also indicated that the focus of DOJ’s Statement of Interest–the need for briefing and an evidentiary hearing on…

This is the first of a couple posts we intend to make on the FTC v. Qualcomm litigation that recently concluded a bench trial last week and is awaiting decision by Judge Koh in the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) federal court.  This case occurs at a historical point of opportunity and transformation brought by the opening stages of the 5G communication revolution.  The theories and targets of the FTC case have caused…

A jury recently found that Huawei willfully infringed four patents owned by PanOptis alleged to be essential to mobile cellular standards and subject to a FRAND commitment as well as a fifth patent related to the H.264 video compression standard but was not subject to a FRAND commitment.   The jury awarded a reasonable royalty of $7.7 million for the single patent without a FRAND commitment, which was almost three times higher than the combined royalty…

Today the Federal Circuit (Renya, Bryson and Hughes) ruled that implied waiver may apply where the prior owner of a U.S. patent had a duty to disclose a related foreign patent application to ETSI even though ETSI had rejected that prior patent owner’s proposed contribution to the standard.  This decision provides insight into several areas, including: Applying the equitable doctrine of implied waiver to the duty to disclose intellectual property rights (IPR) to standard setting…

Magistrate Judge K. Nicole Mitchell of the Eastern District of Texas recently denied patent owner Cellular Communications Equipment LLC (“Cellular” or “CCE”) motion for summary judgment that its asserted patents were not essential to a cellular standard, ruling that there was a factual dispute based on statements made by patent owner Cellular during the litigation.  This case illustrates problems in loosely referring to standard essential patents generically as patents relevant to a standard or erroneously…

Last week, Judge Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an Order that enjoins Huawei from enforcing an injunction on Chinese standard essential patents (SEPs) entered by the Chinese People’s Court of Shenzhen (the Shenzhen Court).  The Chinese Shenzhen Court entered that injunction after considering Samsung’s arguments that the SEPs were subject to Huawei’s commitment to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.  This case provides incremental…