This week saw 60 district court patent filings, 76 terminations, 26 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions (some post grant reviews [PGRs] in there), and two new Fintiv denials—one PGR and one inter partes review (IPR). Gesture Technology had a handful of IPRs instituted against its asserted portfolio; lots of dismissals from relatively high-profile semiconductor cases suggest either a group or cheap RPX settlement; and a number of older assertion campaigns seemed to wrap up with terminations.
Funded Vector Capital Semi Campaign Screeches to Halt: While it’s unclear exactly what the terms of the dismissal were—whether a payment or a walkway or some third-party license—a few days after the parties in the long-running, litigation-funded Monterey Research campaign announced to the judge that IPRs had been instituted on the pending patents, Monterey filed a joint motion to terminate the district court proceedings. From the outside looking in, that looks like a devastating loss for the funder, who had sued 11, including Qualcomm, Marvell, STMicro, Nanya, AMD, and effectively the rest of the semiconductor industry. The settlements or dimissals haven’t hit all the cases, so it’s possible Monterey Research was settling with the parties bringing the IPRs in an attempt to preserve the case against the remaining parties.
Fintiv Denials over ITC, WD of TX Schedules: In the Luxshare Precision Ind. Co. v. Amphenol Co. IPR, a petition was denied this week over a June 2022 ITC hearing date under the Fintiv rule; in a separate competitor-competitor case, NXP USA v. Impinj, Inc., a Western District of Texas claim construction intervened, and the Board found a Feb. 21, 2023 projected trial date (one of three) was too close in time, thus meriting another Fintiv denial (though under the PGR statute, it’s technically under section 324, not 314). The panel there accepted at face value that the trial would move forward as scheduled a few months before the FWD date, despite three concurrently scheduled trials and much evidence to the contrary regarding scheduled trial dates in that district, relying on Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc., IPR2020-00019, Paper 15, 13 (PTAB May 13, 2020) (informative) (“Fintiv II”) (““We generally take courts’ trial schedules at face value absent some strong evidence to the contrary.”). It’s worth noting that, for instance, the third VLSI trial, which has yet to occur, was originally scheduled (and the basis of Fintiv rejections) more than two years ago, and the actual Fintiv trial itself, also now before the Western, has yet to occur more than three years later (Markman finally occurred a month or so ago, resulting in the parties having to pay the court’s former clerk and “technical advisor” Josh Yi upwards of $30,000). The IPR is IPR2022-00132 and the PGR is 2022-00005.
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