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…

Judge Gorton of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts recently entered an order granting a motion by Amphastar Pharmaceuticals (Amphastar) that bars Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Momenta) from enforcing a patent against certain drug manufacturing control processes based on the equitable doctrines of waiver and estoppel that arose form Momenta’s failure to disclose a pending patent application to the standard setting organization (SSO) United States Pharmacopeia (USP) when deliberating on a USP National Formulary (USP-NF) standard. …

Administrative Law Judg (ALJ) Lord at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) recently issued an Order striking patent misuse claims against Philips Lighting (Philips) raised by WAC Lighting and other respondents that were premised on Philips filing its Complaint in the ITC without making a license available “on standard (reasonable) and non-discriminatory terms.”  This ruling provides incremental guidance on the specificity needed to plead a competition law claim based on standard essential patents (SEPs), including…

Judge Gilstrap recently issued an Order rejecting the equitable defense of patent misuse in a case involving standard essential patents (SEPs) subject to a commitment to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.  Motorola Mobility LLC (Motorola) alleged that Saint Lawrence Communications LLC (St. Lawrence or SLC) was guilty of patent misuse by, among other things, requiring Motorola to take a worldwide license to FRAND-committed SEPs, using the threat of injunctive relief in…

This Wednesday, March 21, from 4pm to 5pm Eastern Time, our own David W. Long will present a free one-hour webinar hosted by the Licensing Executives Society (LES) entitled “What Does U.S. Case Law Currently Tell Us About Standard Essential Patent Licensing.” The webinar will provide an overview of U.S. case law related to licensing standard essential patents (SEPs) that the patent owner committed to license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND).  The discussion…

Today, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a Notice of Commission Final Determination  following its review of Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Shaw’s September 2017 rulings concerning, among other things, three patents alleged to be essential to the Linear Tape Open (LTO) 7 standard (LTO-7). (see our Dec. 19, 2017 post summarizing ALJ Shaw’s decision).  Specifically, the ITC affirmed ALJ Shaw’s ruling that the ‘612, ‘106 and ‘805 patents are not essential to the LTO-7…