Dmitry Karshtedt is an Associate Professor of Law at GW Law whose work I’ve followed for years.  Below he introduces the core idea underlying his new article on nonobviousness forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review.  -Jason

Nonobviousness and Time
Dmitry Karshtedt

Over the years, courts and commentators have said many thoughtful things about secondary considerations evidence and its role in the law of § 103, and reasonable minds have expressed significant disagreement about the value of this evidence. Consider, for example, the Federal Circuit’s fractured en banc Apple v. Samsung decision in 2016 and the never-ending debate over whether secondary considerations are best treated as rebuttal evidence to a prima facie case of obviousness based on the prior art, or whether all obviousness evidence should be analyzed holistically and at once.

My take is different: the whole primary/secondary categorization is unhelpful, especially in litigation and during post-issuance PTAB review. Let’s take one illustration. Commercial success and the skepticism of experts are both classified as “secondary considerations,” while teaching away is usually considered to be a part of the primary inquiry. However, skepticism has much more in common with teaching away, which directly tells us that the claimed invention would have been challenging to come up with, than with commercial success, which represents a market response to the invention that may indicate nonobviousness only indirectly. So what is the point of these evidentiary silos?

My answer is that there is no point. In Nonobviousness: Before and After, forthcoming in Iowa Law Review, I examine the different types of evidence used in the obviousness analysis and conclude that the primary/secondary framework does not make sense or have a strong precedential basis. The framework comes from throwaway language in Graham v. John Deere, in which the Supreme Court was grasping for some kind of a label for non-prior art evidence in § 103 cases. It has no grounding in established pre-Graham obviousness (and “invention”) precedent—which, for example, repeatedly supported the proposition that evidence like failure of others can be highly probative of validity. And it is inconsistent with KSR v. Teleflex, which sang a veritable paean to non-prior art evidence (e.g., market pressure and design need) in rejecting the Federal Circuit’s “blinkered focus on individual documents”—as the court acknowledged in one post-KSR opinion. Yet despite its lack of a coherent normative or precedential basis, classification as primary or secondary is well-entrenched and matters a lot in practice because the label can lead to arbitrary bolstering or discounting of certain evidence. On the one hand, the “secondary” scarlet letter can lead courts to ignore good evidence like failure of others, harming the patentee’s case. On the other hand, a boost from the “primary” label can sometimes cause courts to overvalue evidence like unexpected results in favor of the patentee.

I propose a better approach to structuring § 103 analysis based on the timing of the evidence. Under my approach, the filing date provides a useful default dividing line between different kinds of obviousness evidence: rather than categorizing obviousness evidence as primary or secondary, we should instead view the evidence as ex ante or ex post. With this framing, we can see precisely why skepticism has more in common with teaching away than with commercial success: skepticism and teaching away reflect the pre-filing state of the art and thus speak directly to a PHOSITA’s lack of motivation or reasonable expectation of success to pursue the invention at issue, while commercial success is (usually) a post-filing response to the invention and thus constitutes only indirect evidence of nonobviousness. The readers of this blog are very familiar with the concept of nexus—in the sense that a proponent of objective indicia evidence must establish a link between that evidence and the technical merit of the invention as claimed.  My article’s proposal extends this concept to timing in that the party relying on ex post evidence must demonstrate a connection between that evidence and the elements of motivation and reasonable expectation of success at the time of filing. With ex ante evidence, however, temporal nexus is not an issue.

In my scheme, commercial success has more in common with evidence like copying or licensing than with the skepticism of experts and failure of others, which is classic ex ante evidence. And unexpected results, which the Federal Circuit has had great trouble fitting into Graham’s silos (some cases characterize that evidence as primary while others, as secondary), are instead divided into ex ante and ex post unexpected results.  As I show in the article, there is (pre-Graham) Supreme Court precedent supporting this general scheme and even some modern cases sometimes (almost) get it right. However, there is too much confusion in the case law to sustain a consistent approach, suggesting the need for an explicit adoption of the proposed ex ante/ex post framework. The tables below illustrate the key moves (indicated in italics), and the article explains why the proposed scheme will help decision-makers determine the relevance and weight of various nonobviousness evidence with greater accuracy.

Table 1. Graham’s Primary-Secondary Framework

Table 2. Proposed Time-Based Scheme

        [1].     Question marks next to “unexpected results” reflect their inconsistent classification

Read the draft article here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3820851

By Jason Rantanen

There are lots of quantitative studies of patent litigation appellate court decisions, going all the way back to P.J. Federico’s 1956 article Adjudicated Patents in the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society.  One of the big limitations of these studies, though, is that there hasn’t really been any work done to examine how replicable their observations are – even for variables as seemingly simple as whether the court affirmed or reversed on a particular issue, or reached a particular outcome, such as whether a patent’s claims was obvious.  New studies compare their aggregate results to previous studies, but not the actual data themselves–even when studying the same set of cases.

In an article forthcoming in the Hastings Law Journal, Abigail Matthews, Lindsay Kriz and I set out to do exactly that: to examine the amount of agreement between two studies on nonobviousness around the time of KSR v. Teleflex, one that I did that was published in 2013 and one that was recently published by Judge Ryan Holte and Prof. Ted Sichelman.

Our reliability assessment reveals a complex picture.  Somewhat reassuringly, the results from the two studies are largely consistent for decisions from the same time period.  Surprisingly, however, fewer than 2/3rds of the decisions analyzed in both studies were the same—even when limited to the identical time period and using the same criteria.  Within that set of cases, however, the core data coding was largely identical, with a few notable exceptions.  Specifically, we find differences in the coding for procedural postures and in some coding related to judicial reasoning.

In addition, since the period covered by those two studies ended several years ago, we also updated the dataset through the end of 2019.  Here are some highlights from our findings:

• The number of Federal Circuit decisions in appeals arising from the district courts that involved a § 103 issue peaked between 2010 and 2015, and in recent years has declined to half of that peak.
• The percentage of Federal Circuit decisions with an outcome of “obvious” in appeals arising from the district courts remained high between 2006 and 2014, but since 2015 the number of “obvious” outcomes has fallen dramatically.
• The Federal Circuit continues to affirm district courts on the issue of obviousness at a high rate (around 80% of the time since 2013), and—in contrast with the immediate post-KSR period studied Holte & Sichelman (2019) and Rantanen (2013)—since 2013, affirmances have been equally high for district court outcomes of “nonobvious.”
• The number of grants of summary judgment involving § 103 that were reviewed by the Federal Circuit in its decisions has fallen substantially in recent years. Nearly all § 103 decisions arising from the district court that were reviewed by the Federal Circuit between 2016 and 2019 involved a bench or jury trial.

In the paper we talk about some possible explanations for this decline, including two obvious causes: the rise of inter partes review and patent eligible subject matter issues.  You can read the full preprint on SSRN here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3818466.  I’m hoping to have the data posted within the next few weeks.

Alan Cox is an economist with over thirty years’ experience testifying in Antitrust and Intellectual Property matters. He holds a Ph.D. in Economic Analysis and Policy from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.  He is an Affiliated Consultant at NERA Economic Consulting.  In this guest post he provides his observations of the damages testimony in VLSI Technologies v. Intel. As noted in the letter from Professor Chao that Dennis posted earlier, key filings in this case are not publicly accessible (nor are the transcripts). – Jason

Introduction

VLSI Technologies sued Intel for the alleged infringement of several patents.  At trial VLSI asserted two patents: 7,523,373 (“the ‘373 Patent”), and 7,725,759 (“the ‘759 Patent”).  VLSI asserted that the technology described in these patents was incorporated into 987 million Intel microprocessors of various models.  On March 2, a jury in the Western District of Texas awarded VLSI $2.18 billion in damages for Intel’s pre-trial use of the patents.

The court allowed the public to listen to public portions of the trial by telephone.  This article describes aspects of the testimony and attorney statements on damages as logged in contemporaneous notes.

The damages testimony in this trial is interesting for several reasons, including Plaintiff’s presentation of a regression analysis as the basis of its damages claim.  Regression analysis is a sophisticated quantitative technique that is widely used in the academic literature, in making business decisions and in many areas of litigation, though it is seldom presented in patent trials.  The data necessary to undertake regression analysis is generally unavailable in patent matters.  As is often the case in the application of complicated statistical methods, the results can vary with inputs, underlying assumptions, data availability and other factors.  While Intel did address possible problems or partiality in the application of the methodology, the defendant’s core attack on the regression analysis was its repeated assertion that the method has never been undertaken in the real-world process of licensing patents.

By way of additional background, it appears that ownership of the patents had changed hands at least twice as the result either of mergers or as part of a sale of the patents themselves, including the sale to VLSI.  These transactions indicated a much lower value for the patents than was claimed by VLSI and awarded by the jury.  The patented technology had been originally assigned to Freescale, an integrated circuit manufacturer spun off from Motorola, later purchased by another semiconductor manufacturer, NXP.  Freescale was the owner of the patents at the time that Intel first allegedly infringed them.  Finally, as Intel pointed out at trial, VLSI is a non-practicing entity that undertakes no research nor production and has two employees.

VLSI’s Regression Analysis

A regression is a statistical analysis that is used to estimate the impact of several variables on another variable.  One use of the method, hedonic regression, measures the impact of product attributes on the price of that product.  For example, hedonic regressions have been used to determine how prices of automobiles vary with changes in horsepower, gas mileage, brand, and other attributes.  Hedonic regressions provide ratios that measure the amount by which prices will change with a change in one of these attributes.  For example, such a ratio may be the percentage by which the price of a car increases with a percentage increase in horsepower.

In this case, VLSI’s affirmative damages case was presented by a Ph.D. economist, Ryan Sullivan.  He applied regression analysis to estimate the impact of different attributes of Intel microprocessors on the price of those microprocessors.  Most important was his estimate of the response of price to changes in microprocessor speed.  His regression result indicated that a one percent increase in microprocessor speed increased the price of an Intel microprocessor by 0.764 percent, holding all other attributes of the microprocessor constant.

There was little discussion of the regression analysis at trial since VLSI clearly wanted to focus on demonstrating how the regression resulted in a large damage number and Intel did little to challenge the implementation of the methodology.  In cross examining Dr. Sullivan, Intel’s attorneys did, however, challenge VLSI’s expert about his inclusion of some potential explanatory variables and the exclusion of others.  Some of VLSI’s expert’s responses indicated that Intel may have had some effective points of attack of VLSI’s implementation of the regression methodology had it chosen to pursue them.

Calculating Damages from Regression Results

Next, VLSI’s damages expert used his regression results to calculate the total value that Intel purportedly received for the use of the two patents.  For this he relied on VLSI’s technical experts who had testified that the ‘373 patent decreased microprocessor power consumption by 5.45 percent and that the ‘759 patent increased microprocessor performance by 1.11 percent.  He also relied on a crucial assertion by VLSI’s technology experts that a one percent improvement in power consumption or a one percent increase in performance could be “valued as” a one percent increase in speed.  Using those asserted equivalencies in the value of microprocessor speed, power consumption and performance, VLSI’s damages expert calculated the value of the benefit of the patented technology by multiplying these percentage improvements in power consumption and performance by the percentage increases in price attributable to increases in speed.  Finally, he multiplied the resulting percentage increase in revenue by the total revenue that Intel had earned on the accused products.

This calculation can be restated concisely in summary mathematical form.  VLSI’s damages expert undertook the following calculations:

Intel’s Increase in Revenue due to its use of the ’373 Patent =

Price-Speed Ratio X % Reduced Power Use X $Accused Product Sales =

0.764 X 5.45% X $Accused Product Sales

Intel’s Increase in Revenue due to its use of the ’759 Patent =

Price-Speed Ratio X % Increased Performance X $Accused Product Sales =

0.764 X 1.11% X $Accused Product Sales

VLSI’s damages expert testified that there would be no increase in direct manufacturing costs from utilizing the patented technology and only a very small increase in selling and marketing costs.  Since there were no incremental costs to subtract from the additional revenue allegedly earned from using the patented technology, the increase in profits was equal to the claimed increase in revenues.

The Outcome of the Hypothetical Negotiation

The next step was to determine how Intel and VLSI would share these benefits in a hypothetical negotiation, the fictional event that takes place on the eve of first infringement during which the litigants are imagined to reach agreement on a royalty.  It is often customary to discuss the negotiating process over the sharing of benefits as being shaped by the relative bargaining power of the parties at the hypothetical negotiation.  VLSI’s damages expert instead undertook an unusual calculation.  He first calculated what he claimed was Intel’s contribution to the commercial success of its microprocessors.  He then subtracted the amount of Intel’s contribution from his estimate of Intel’s increase in profits due to its use of VLSI’s patents.

To implement this division, VLSI’s damages expert started by claiming that Intel’s contribution to its success in generating the patent-related additional profit could be measured as the sum of certain costs divided by its total revenue.  The reasoning that justified this approach was that these costs were incurred in the development and marketing of Intel chips.  More specifically, he took the sum of Intel’s Selling and Marketing Costs (S&M); its General and Administrative Costs (G&A); and its Research and Development Costs (R&D) and then divided that sum by Intel’s total revenue.  That is:

Intel’s Proportional Contribution = (S&M + G&A + R&D) / Intel’s Total Revenue

The result, 20.7 percent, was deemed to be Intel’s share of the estimated increase in profits that it earned from incorporating the patented technology into its microprocessors.  The remaining 79.3 percent was, therefore, attributable to VLSI.

The asserted outcome of the hypothetical negotiation was then simply the result of multiplying 79.3 percent by the increase in Intel profits, described above.  VLSI’s damages expert estimated the amount of money that a reasonable royalty would have generated before trial, a figure presumably close to the over $2 billion awarded by the jury.  VLSI’s damages expert claimed that Intel would have been willing to pay such a royalty because it faced strong competition and needed the competitive edge that the patented technology provided to maintain its market position.

The presentation of damages as a single payment for past infringement did create a potential problem for VLSI.  During the trial, Intel asserted that VLSI’s expert had not presented a per unit royalty in his pre-trial disclosure and should not be allowed to present a per unit royalty in court.  A ruling in Intel’s favor may have made future royalties unavailable.  As it happened the court ruled in VLSI’s favor on this point.

VLSI’s Anticipation of Defendant’s Critiques

In its direct testimony on damages, VLSI addressed several additional critiques that had been raised by Intel in pretrial filings, reports or deposition testimony.  First, VLSI’s damages expert was asked in his direct testimony about Intel’s claim that VLSI and its experts had not identified any comparable real-world licenses that resulted in payments as high as those that he was claiming to be reasonable; that is, in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.  They also asked him about the much lower patent values implied from the purchase of Freescale and the sale of the patents to VLSI, mentioned above.

VLSI’s damages expert responded that none of those real-world licenses and sales were analogous to the hypothetical license in this case.  He asserted that licensors in real-world licensing negotiations do not have comprehensive knowledge of the importance of the patents that are under negotiation.  Similarly, purchasers of the ‘373 and the ‘759 patents would not have known of the value of the patents to Intel or even the extent of the use of the patented technologies.  Any of the earlier transactions involving the patents would not, he claimed, have incorporated Intel’s expectations and experience of the benefits of using the technology.  VLSI frequently claimed through this and other witnesses that only Intel would have understood the value of the patented technology that it was exploiting.

VLSI’s damages expert characterized the hypothetical negotiation, by contrast, as one in which both side’s “cards were facing up.”   Consequently, the licensor, Freescale, would have been fully informed of everything that Intel knew about the usefulness and value of the licensor’s technology.  VLSI appeared to claim that the information that was available to Freescale in the up-facing cards included information about sales, profits and other outcomes after the date of the hypothetical negotiation.  VLSI’s damages expert indicated that the royalty rates found in Intel’s purported real-world comparable licenses were analogous to what Tom Brady was paid as a rookie before he had demonstrated his abilities as a quarterback in a professional football league.  According to VLSI, what was relevant at the time of the hypothetical negotiation was equivalent to what Tom Brady was paid during the peak of his career, not on what was known about him before his rookie year.  The use of the analogy appears to indicate that VLSI viewed the hypothetical negotiation as being informed by events and outcomes that took place after Intel’s earliest infringement, sometimes rationalized by reference to the “Book of Wisdom.”

He was also asked about the evidence that the technology was not used by any other company other than Intel, not even by Freescale and NXP, the semiconductor manufacturers who had previously owned the patents.  He described that point as merely a “red herring” since use by the patent owner was not the only determinant of the value of the patents.  As a basis for this point, he cited the Georgia-Pacific factors that call for consideration of the extent to which the infringer has made profitable use of the invention.

Damages-Related Testimony from Other VLSI Witnesses

Before the Plaintiff’s damages expert was called, a VLSI technical witness presented the results of a “patent scoring” exercise undertaken by Innography, an IP management firm.  According to Innography’s scoring, the two patents at trial were in the top 10 percent of patent value.  VLSI’s introduction of this result may contradict its key point that only Intel had sufficient information to have some understanding of the value of the technology since Innography could presumably only make such a claim from public data.

Defense Response on Damages

Intel had apparently provided expert reports on damages from at least three expert witnesses.  These included: a Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at Wharton with a Ph.D. in Management from MIT; a CPA with extensive experience as an IP damages expert; and an electrical engineer with 20 years of experience as a licensing executive with IBM.  VLSI moved to have the CPA’s “cumulative” opinions excluded as being redundant and “an improper attempt to bolster” the opinions of Intel’s other damages experts.  Whatever the court’s ruling on this and other motions to exclude, Intel called only the former licensing executive, Hanc Huston, to rebut VLSI’s damages expert.

Most of Intel’s damages testimony was not available on the public telephone feed because it involved confidential information primarily related to the comparable licenses that he had identified.  Intel’s damages expert brought up the point that the patented technology had not been used by any of the assignees of the patents and that VLSI had not identified anyone else who had used the technology.  He asserted that, in his experience, such lack of use of a patent was indicative of its low value and would have driven down the royalty paid on a licensed patent.  He also testified that he had never heard of hedonic regression being used in patent licensing negotiations.

He also disagreed with VLSI’s assertion that only Intel had the information necessary to comprehend the extremely high value of the patented technology.  He pointed out that the patent itself was public knowledge and that VLSI and others could have reverse engineered Intel to understand the extent that its technology was being used.

After discussing 18 licenses that he had determined were comparable, VLSI’s damages expert concluded that a reasonable royalty for Intel’s use of the technology described in the two patents totaled $2.2 million.

On cross-examination, Intel’s damages expert was asked about a policy at IBM to license patents for a one percent royalty per patent up to a maximum royalty of five percent.  VLSI pointed out, in cross and in closing, that a one percent per patent royalty was more than the amount that VLSI was asking in damages.  He was also asked about specific licenses and settlements between IBM that involved payments in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Testimony of VLSI’s Rebuttal Damages Expert

The final witness on damages was Mark Chandler, the president of another IP management firm, who was called to rebut Intel’s damages testimony.  He criticized Intel’s damages expert as relying on the “indirect evidence” of royalty rates from purportedly comparable licenses as opposed to the evidence of Intel’s success with the accused products.  He also repeated the claim made by VLSI’s affirmative damages expert that none of the previous transactions were indicative of the outcome of the hypothetical negotiation.  Those transactions, he asserted, could not have taken into account the value of the technology to Intel.  He further criticized Intel’s expert’s process for identifying ostensibly comparable licenses, indicating that his method was based on technical considerations without consideration of the commercial value of the licensed patents or any other economic considerations.

This expert also indicated that Intel’s damages expert had calculated per patent royalty rates by merely dividing the reported royalty in his purportedly comparable licenses by the number of patents being licensed.  Such an average, he testified, fails to take into account the range of values of the licensed patents.  He further testified that Intel’s expert had “cherry-picked” from among over 300 licenses that were part of the record in this case, ignoring licenses that resulted in payments of hundreds of millions of dollars with at least one being over a billion dollars.

This expert also claimed that Intel had ignored “direct evidence” of the value of the patents, the value of the use that Intel had made of the patents and the additional profits allegedly derived therefrom.  He repeated the claim that, unlike in the real world, in the hypothetical negotiation the parties would be “playing with their cards up” and have full knowledge of the value of the patents to each other.

Conclusion

The trial in VLSI Technologies provided not only a dramatic outcome but useful insights in the presentation and rebuttal of a damages case.  Interested observers can look forward to further motions, orders and appeals that should provide additional information about the technology and the appropriateness of the award.

Disclosure: I have no involvement with any of the parties or the law firms at this time. I have had no involvement in this litigation. I have never worked with VLSI. I have worked on at least one litigated matter with Wilmer Hale. I have consulted for Intel twice and testified for them once over my entire career but, to repeat, have no involvement with Intel at this time.

By Jason Rantanen

What do you call the part of the patent or application that is required by 35 U.S.C. § 112(a)?   The world would love to hear your responses.  Here’s a two-question survey that will take  about 10 seconds to complete.  If there’s a reasonably large number of responses, I’ll post the results later this week.

Link to survey.

To the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) community, the Federal Circuit’s October opinion in the ongoing appeal of GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva (“GSK”), No. 2018-1976 (Fed. Cir.) was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Some language in the panel majority’s opinion suggested an expansion of induced infringement liability to transform mere statements of equivalence made on promotional materials into triggers for liability. This language came dangerously close to swallowing an industry extolled for democratizing science and helping the United States overcome its PPE shortage in the heart of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Federal Circuit’s subsequent choice to vacate its initial opinion and re-hear the case signals that crisis may have been averted, but the close call was a reminder of the uphill battle open design faces despite the significant public benefits it creates. We cannot predict exactly what the Federal Circuit’s new opinion will look like, but as advocates for the OSHW community, we hope the panel treads carefully.

I. The Importance of Open-Source Hardware to Innovation

Open source hardware is a physical item whose source files have been shared with the world and can be freely copied or modified. By enabling anyone to study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware, open source hardware allows the sharing of knowledge and encourages innovation through the open exchange of designs. In contrast to proprietary hardware, any relevant documentation related to open source hardware is licensed for individuals to openly participate in the design and development of the hardware, or to replicate and manufacture the hardware devices. By making it easier to begin engineering from a prior design, open source design quickens invention and commercialization of new technologies.

The benefits of open source hardware were on vivid display last year, as the demand for PPE skyrocketed amid the COVID-19 outbreak and caused a “chronic shortage” of supply. Relying on open-source hardware and design, thousands of individuals met this moment of need with ingenuity. To name a few inspiring examples

• designs coordinated by UH Ventures were adopted by the State of Ohio as standards of care;
• Make4Covid delivered 120,000 units of PPE in 6 months, many to rural and children’s hospitals and the Navajo Nation; and
• Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS) created supplies with an estimated commercial value of $271 million.

Open source hardware facilitated this process by disseminating the designs for novel reusable PPE publicly, which not only enabled DIY enthusiasts to collaboratively iterate and manufacture designs for safe equipment at a low cost, but also solved local shortages in equipment. The response to COVID has exposed manufacturing and distribution as primary logistical challenges to disaster response, yet the use of open design to create PPE highlights how distributed manufacturing and supply chains—enabled by openness—can overcome logistical hurdles. Harnessing the power of open design to respond to global crises didn’t begin with the pandemic. Glia Project, for example, has responded to a need for stethoscopes and tourniquets among doctors in the Gaza Strip by sharing 3-D printable open source designs for these devices since 2018.

Beyond providing society with useful tools in responding to crises, open source hardware also has the higher order capacity to democratize science. Research equipment made with open source design is cheaper for scientists to acquire or build on their own, as well as modify to match local conditions, thus lowering the cost barrier to scientific research across the globe. The OSHW community believes that technological capacity should not depend on where one is born; open source hardware therefore offers a promising vision of the future by allowing scientific education in the poorest parts of the world to move past theoretical discussions and into practical applications.

II. GSK v. Teva: The Original Decision

Contrary to popular belief, legal education does not begin with learning the concepts of offer and acceptance in contracts, negligence in torts, or even well-pleaded complaints in Civil Procedure. No, legal education begins during recess period, when one friend (Charlie) encourages another friend (Skyler) to throw the only kickball over the school fence. When caught in the act, Skyler points the finger at Charlie’s encouragement, and the teacher must engage in a fact-finding mission to determine Charlie’s culpability. Depending on how actively Charlie encouraged Skyler, Charlie too may be spending Saturday morning in detention.

The doctrine of inducement infringement in intellectual property law is no different. 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) states “whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer.” Traditionally, § 271(b) has been interpreted as requiring more than mere knowledge: plaintiffs must show active steps taken by the defendant that encouraged direct infringement. See, e.g., Takeda Pharm. U.S.A., Inc. v. West-Ward Pharm. Corp., 785 F.3d 625, 631 (Fed Cir. 2015) (“Merely describing an infringing mode is not the same as recommending, encouraging, or promoting an infringing use, or suggesting that an infringing use ‘should’ be performed.”) (cleaned up). To further the recess analogy, Charlie might be in trouble for imploring Skyler to throw the ball over the fence, but probably avoids culpability by merely explaining how to throw a ball so high as to clear the fence.

The ongoing pharma case GSK v. Teva—chronicled by PatentlyO here and here—has the potential to expand inducement liability to encompass far more than just “active encouragement.” But doing so would threaten the OSHW community, which would have deleterious downstream effects on innovation, crisis response, and the democratization of science.

The panel majority’s original opinion found Teva liable for inducing infringement of GSK’s patent on Coreg to treat congestive heart failure (“CHF”). Relevant to the OSHW community, GSK’s patents on Coreg and its non-CHF-related uses had already expired. Nevertheless, relying heavily (as Judge Prost points out in dissent) on evidence that Teva’s promotional materials referred to its generic tablets as “AB rated” equivalents of the Coreg tablets, Teva was found liable for inducing infringement despite only instructing patients and doctors to use its product for off-patent (i.e., non-CHF) uses.

The panel majority seemed to assume that doctors and pateints would combine the “AB rating” with instructions GSK (not Teva!) provided on how to use Coreg to treat CHF in finding Teva liable for inducement infringement. The panel majority’s reasoning indicates that a distributor of an unpatented product used for unpatented uses A and B could still be held liable if the product was also capable of being used for patented use C.  This would be true even if the distributor of the product made no mention of use C in advertising or educational materials. This broad language lessens patent holders’ burden of proving inducement and could create liability for wholly innocent OSHW developers whose statements of equivalence relate to off-patented uses entirely sepearate from and uninterested in the patented uses.

Statements of equivalence are a far cry from the traditional active encouragement test, spelling bad news for Charlie, our fearless recess ringleader, and potentially worse for designers of open source hardware. Would an open source hardware developer be subject to liability by simply promoting their product as structurally equivalent to a brand-name product, despite not encouraging, mentioning, or even being aware of a specific infringing use? The original panel majority’s focus on Teva’s AB rating suggests that it might be. But then how would the public benefit from the innovation and utility that flow from these cheaper and more accessible alternatives?

Further, the OSHW community would be burdened with administrative costs associated with monitoring which unpatented designs have patented uses. The OSHW community might also fall victim to an avalanche of new patent infringement claims from patent trolls.

The original GSK opinion was not only unduly broad, but also worryingly vague. What type of knowledge and marketing, for example, is sufficient to trigger liability under the panel majority’s rubric (“the provider of an identical product knows of and markets the same product for intended direct infringing activity”)? Without a clear statement on what type of promotional activity triggers inducement liability, open source developers, many of which are too small to afford sophisticated legal departments, will either have their activities chilled or expose themselves to liability. The confused expansion of inducement doctrine contained in the Federal Circuit’s October opinion could have been the death knell of a highly useful emerging industry.

Part III: GSK v. Teva: The Future

 Thankfully, the panel rehearing (which took place on February 23^rd) may signal that the panel will decide the GSK case on clearer and—we hope—narrower grounds that do not inhibit the progress of the OSHW community. One way a new opinion could do so is by clarifying that mere statements of structural, chemical, or therapeutic equivalence are insufficient to create inducement liability. The panel can and should reaffirm that inducement can only be established through evidence of active steps taken by the defendant that encouraged direct infringement. Doing so would properly protect incentives to innovate without prohibiting the public from off-patent uses of the same: a win-win for innovators everywhere.

As we hope to have made clear, the open source hardware community spurs innovation and supports the public interest by reducing the cost of scientific research and increasing manufacturing capabilities. Any good intellectual property regime means to serve these interests.

By Jason Rantanen

I teach Introduction to Intellectual Property Law every spring semester, an experience that often causes me to reflect on some of the fundamental premises of intellectual property law in a way that advanced courses don’t necessarily always invite.  When you’re deep in the nuances of the effective date provision for post-AIA § 102, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the big questions.  This post is one of a few half-baked ideas from that return-to-basics reflection.

***

I grew up steeped in the world of property law.  My father’s law office was in rural New York, and his core practice involved representing farmers, villages, and small businesses on land transactions, estate planning, and probate matters.  Some of my first memories are of photocopying property abstracts: voluminous documents that contained the transaction history for a property, often going back a hundred years or more.  We’d copy these abstracts and then affix the new deed or mortgage associated with the transaction.  Later, I learned to type up property descriptions for deeds, writing out the metes and bounds of the land being transferred.  These descriptions  used points and lines to articulate the land for which the property rights applied.

For me, the language of patent claims as boundaries resonated early and easily.  After all, patent cases routinely refer to claims in boundary-like terms.  One example is the likening of claims to “metes and bounds,” as Judge Rich did in footnote 5 of In re Vamco Machine and Tool, Inc., 752 F.2d 1564, 1577 (Fed. Cir. 1985).

The function of claims is (a) to point out what the invention is in such a way as to distinguish it from what was previously known, i.e., from the prior art; and (b) to define the scope of protection afforded by the patent. In both of those aspects, claims are not technical descriptions of the disclosed inventions but are legal documents like the descriptions of lands by metes and bounds in a deed which define the area conveyed but do not describe the land.

Another example is this passage from Judge Michel’s opinion  in Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. v. M-I LLC, 514 F.3d 1244, 1249 (Fed. Cir. 2008):

Because claims delineate the patentee’s right to exclude, the patent statute requires that the scope of the claims be sufficiently definite to inform the public of the bounds of the protected invention, i.e., what subject matter is covered by the exclusive rights of the patent. Otherwise, competitors cannot avoid infringement, defeating the public notice function of patent claims.

Patent law scholarship, too, treats patent claims as if they are boundary-setting.  Books and articles refer to modern claiming practice as “peripheral claiming”– language that implies an area that is within and that which is without.  Even those scholars who have critiqued the idea of peripheral claiming nonetheless visualize patent claims as defining an area: signposts instead of fenceposts.  The idea is still that there is a zone set by the patent claim.

And yet, the more I’ve litigated, studied, and taught about patents, the more I’ve realized that conceptualizing patent claims as defining an area is fundamentally wrong.  Patent claims are not boundaries, and it’s confusing to those who are trying to grasp patent law when we talk about them that way.  There is no area that is “encompassed” within patent claims.  Patent claims don’t define a “boundary.”  And they are quite unlike the metes and bounds of a deed description.  Even if one could plot the components of a patent claim in some n-dimensional space, it would still not define a closed form.  Conceptualizing patent claims as if they define some “area” of technology isn’t how they actually work. One cannot draw a line from one claim element to another, except in the sense that claim elements can interrelate with one another–but that, too, is really just another element, albeit one that is implicit from the semantic structure of the claim rather than explicit in its words.

So how should patent claims be conceptualized, if not as establishing a boundary?  My first answer goes back to how litigants and courts often actually approach them: as discrete legal elements akin to the elements of any other legal claim.  The limitations in patent claims aren’t like the boundaries defined in a deed; instead, they are like the elements of a tort.  Each of these elements must be met in order for the claim to be infringed, invalidated, or adequately supported by the disclosure.

Consider, for example, patent law’s novelty requirement.  In order for a prior art reference to anticipate a patent claim, each and every element of the claim must be present in the prior art reference.  Or the analysis for infringement: for there to be infringement, each and every element of the claim must be present in the accused product or process, either literally or as an equivalent.  In both cases, patent claims are treated as if they are a series of elements–not as boundary lines that are crossed or not.  They are, in the words of Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary, “the component parts of a legal claim.”

In the end, despite my initial attraction to the language of real property to describe patent claims, I’ve come to realize that this rhetorical device–enshrined in patent law judicial opinions and used in briefs and legal scholarship–is both misleading and wrong.  Patent claims are not boundaries, and we should stop referring to them that way.  Instead, they are elements in their legal sense: sets of individual legal requirements that must each be proven to achieve a particular legal status.

Perhaps this is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said.  And yet, for those who are learning patent law for the first time, it is hardly obvious – particularly when the opinions that we read talk about patent claims in boundary-like terms.

***

Thoughtful, non-repetitive comments welcome.  Comments that I think are crud or junk, in my subjective opinion, will be deleted without further notice or comment.

New PatentlyO Patent Law Journal article by Thomas F. Cotter, Taft Stettinius & Hollister Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and Innovators Network Foundation Intellectual Property Fellow.  Professor Cotter is also the author of the Comparative Patent Remedies blog. 

Abstract:  It has often been observed that, while patent rights are territorial in scope, commerce is global and, increasingly, interconnected.  Indeed, with the advent of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), technical standards soon will enable not only devices such as smartphones and tablets, but also automobiles, medical devices, and even home appliances to receive and transmit data within and across national borders.  To achieve these ends, firms participate in standard-setting organizations (SSOs) to hammer out the technical standards that enable communication and interoperability among devices.  Moreover, because the implementation of these standards requires the use of many different, typically proprietary, technologies, SSOs generally encourage or require their members both to declare their ownership of patents that may be essential to the practice of the relevant standard, and to commit to licensing these standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms.  The FRAND commitments themselves, in turn, often are interpreted as binding contracts for the benefit of third parties (that is, for the benefit of implementers).  In principle, these requirements work to ensure both that implementers are able to access essential technologies, and that owners are fairly compensated for their inventive contributions. 

Two problems nevertheless can impede the smooth working of such a system.  The first is that SSO rules typically do not define the term “FRAND,” for a variety of reasons.  Disputes over the meaning of FRAND therefore are inevitable.  The second is that, because patents are territorial, courts often have been reluctant to adjudicate foreign patent rights.  This understanding of patent rights, however, might appear, to some observers at least, to collide with commercial realities, when parties are unable to reach agreement and opt for adjudication by national courts.  Current responses to these problems are likely to prove unsatisfactory for both owners and implementers; a comprehensive solution nonetheless remains, for now, elusive.

Read: Thomas F. Cotter, Is Global FRAND Litigation Spinning Out of Control, 2021 PatentlyO Law Journal 1 (2021) (Cotter.2021.GlobalFRANDLitigation)

Prior Patently-O Patent L.J. Articles:

• Colleen V. Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, and Rodney Swartz, Parsing the Impact of Alice and the PEG, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 20 (2020) (Chien.2020.ImpactOfAlice)
• Paul R. Michel and John T. Battaglia, eBay, the Right to Exclude, and the Two Classes of Patent Owners, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 11 (2020) (Michel.2020.RightToExclude)
• Thomas F. Cotter, Two Errors in the Ninth Circuit’s Qualcomm Opinion, 2020 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2020). (Cotter.2020.TwoErrors.pdf)
• Jasper L. Tran & J. Sean Benevento, Alice at Five, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 25 (2019) (Tran.2019.AliceatFive.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Implementing Apportionment, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 20 (Chao.2019.ImplementingApportionment)
• Jeremy C. Doerre, Is There Any Need to Resort to a § 101 Exception for Prior Art Ideas?, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 10. (2019.Doerre.AnyNeed)
• Colleen V. Chien, Piloting Applicant-Initiated 101 Deferral Through A Randomized Controlled Trial, 2019 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (2019.Chien.DeferringPSM)
• David A. Boundy, Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem, 2018 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 20. (Boundy.2018.BadGuidance)
• Colleen Chien and Jiun-Ying Wu, Decoding Patentable Subject Matter, 2018 PatentlyO Patent Law Journal 1.
• Paul M. Janicke, Patent Venue: Half Christmas Pie, And Half Crow, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 13. (Janicke.2017.ChristmasPie.pdf)
• Paul M. Janicke, The Imminent Outpouring from the Eastern District of Texas, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2017) (Janicke.2017.Venue)
• Mark A. Lemley, Erik Oliver, Kent Richardson, James Yoon, & Michael Costa, Patent Purchases and Litigation Outcomes, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 15 (Lemley.2016.PatentMarket)
• Bernard Chao and Amy Mapes, An Early Look at Mayo’s Impact on Personalized Medicine, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 10 (Chao.2016.PersonalizedMedicine)
• James E. Daily, An Empirical Analysis of Some Proponents and Opponents of Patent Reform, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (Daily.2016.Professors)
• Tristan Gray–Le Coz and Charles Duan, Apply It to the USPTO: Review of the Implementation of Alice v. CLS Bank in Patent Examination, 2014 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (GrayLeCozDuan)
• Robert L. Stoll, Maintaining Post-Grant Review Estoppel in the America Invents Act: A Call for Legislative Restraint, 2012 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (Stoll.2012.estoppel.pdf)
• Paul Morgan, The Ambiguity in Section 102(a)(1) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 29.  (Morgan.2011.AIAAmbiguities)
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, Derivation and Prior Art Problems with the New Patent Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 12 (sarnoff.2011.derivation.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Not So Confidential: A Call for Restraint in Sealing Court Records, 2011 Patently-O Patent Patent Law Journal 6 (chao.sealedrecords.pdf)
• Benjamin Levi and Rodney R. Sweetland, The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Recommendations to the International Trade Commission (ITC):  Unsound, Unmeasured, and Unauthoritative, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (levi.ftcunsound.pdf)
• Kevin Emerson Collins, An Initial Comment on King Pharmaceuticals: The Printed Matter Doctrine as a Structural Doctrine and Its Implications for Prometheus Laboratories, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 111 (Collins.KingPharma.pdf)
• Robert A. Matthews, Jr., When Multiple Plaintiffs/Relators Sue for the Same Act of Patent False Marking, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 95 (matthews.falsemarking.pdf)
• Kristen Osenga, The Patent Office’s Fast Track Will Not Take Us in the Right Direction, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 89 (Osenga.pdf)
• Peter S. Menell,  The International Trade Commission’s Section 337 Authority, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 79
• Donald S. Chisum, Written Description of the Invention: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 72
• Kevin Collins, An Initial Comment on Ariad: Written Description and the Baseline of Patent Protection for After-Arising Technology, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24
• Etan Chatlynne, Investigating Patent Law’s Presumption of Validity—An Empirical Analysis, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 37
• Michael Kasdan and Joseph Casino, Federal Courts Closely Scrutinizing and Slashing Patent Damage Awards, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24 (Kasdan.Casino.Damages)
• Dennis Crouch, Broadening Federal Circuit Jurisprudence: Moving Beyond Federal Circuit Patent Cases, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 19 (2010)
• Edward Reines and Nathan Greenblatt, Interlocutory Appeals of Claim Construction in the Patent Reform Act of 2009, Part II, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 7  (2010) (Reines.2010)
• Gregory P. Landis & Loria B. Yeadon, Selecting the Next Nominee for the Federal Circuit: Patently Obvious to Consider Diversity, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (2010) (Nominee Diversity)
• Paul Cole, Patentability of Computer Software As Such, 2008 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1. (Cole.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, The Death of Google’s Patents, 2008 Patently O-Pat. L.J. ___ (googlepatents101.pdf)
• Mark R. Patterson, Reestablishing the Doctrine of Patent Exhaustion, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 38
• Arti K. Rai, The GSK Case: An Administrative Perspective, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 36
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, BIO v. DC and the New Need to Eliminate Federal Patent Law Preemption of State and Local Price and Product Regulation, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 30 (Download Sarnoff.BIO.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, Are Administrative Patent Judges Unconstitutional?, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 21. (Duffy.BPAI.pdf)
• Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan, In re Seagate Technology: Willfulness and Waiver, a Summary and a Proposal, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (Casino-Seagate)

Guest Post by Prof. Ted Sichelman, University of San Diego School of Law

Many online services provide district court patent litigation dockets, documents, and associated patent numbers. However, none of these services offer comprehensive, hand-coded patent numbers and case types, plus full dockets and key documents (complaints, summary judgments, verdicts), downloadable in bulk at no charge and with no license restrictions.

After more than three years of extensive automated and manual review of patent dockets, the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist —in conjunction with researchers from the University of San Diego’s Center for IP Law & Markets (myself) and Northwestern Law School (David L. Schwartz)—have completed that very goal, expanding upon the patent litigation dataset the USPTO had released in 2015.

Currently, the dataset (available here) includes:

• Dockets: The complete docket for every lawsuit filed in district courts tagged as a patent action in PACER (and many other patent cases tagged under non-patent PACER codes) from the first patent case logged in PACER through the end of 2016 (over 80,000 case dockets).
• Attorneys & Parties: Full lists of parties by type (e.g., plaintiff, defendant, intervener, etc.) and their attorneys, with full contact information for the attorneys gathered from public records.
• Patent Numbers: Comprehensive, hand-coded patent numbers by a team over 30 law students from all electronically available complaints in PACER in cases filed from 2003 through the end of 2016.
  • Based on testing against several of the leading commercial services, plus publicly available data from the Stanford NPE Litigation Database, the dataset’s patent number information is substantially more complete and accurate than any of these services (which often use automated methods for determining patents-in-suit).
• Case Types: Every case in PACER filed from 2003 through the end of 2016 is identified with one of 15 fine-grained case types, including patent infringement (non-declaratory judgement [DJ]), DJ on non-infringement and invalidity, DJ on non-infringement only, DJ on invalidity only, false marking, inventorship, malpractice, regulatory challenge, and others.

In the next few months, the USPTO will make available:

• Documents: Initial complaints, summary judgment orders, and verdicts (bench and jury) that are electronically available for all patent cases in PACER filed from 2003 through the end of 2016.

The data is downloadable only in bulk and is not searchable at the USPTO website. However, it is relatively straightforward to download and search the patent number, case type, and attorney data, in Microsoft Excel or other database and statistical packages.

Importantly, there are no licensing restrictions whatsoever on the use of the data, and the research team and USPTO expect that commercial and non-commercial services will add the information to their search interfaces in the coming year. Additionally, the research team is hoping to update all of the data for patent cases filed through the end of 2020 sometime next year. Further down the road, we hope to code cases for outcomes and add appeals by supplementing Jason Rantanen’s comprehensive Compendium of Federal Circuit Decisions with full dockets and key documents.

In examining litigation trends, many researchers across the academic, public, and private sectors have used proprietary datasets, which generally could not be disclosed to other researchers for study replication and testing. Hopefully, academics and others will now use the USPTO’s fully open dataset for studies on the U.S. patent litigation system to allow for meaningful review of empirical studies.

Documentation on the database is available here and at the USPTO webpage. Anyone interested in using the data is also welcome to contact me (tsichelman@sandiego.edu) with technical and other questions.

New Patently-O Law Journal Essay by Colleen V. Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, and Rodney Swartz.

Abstract:

Almost two years have passed since the USPTO issued its January 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance (PEG), itself a response to the Supreme Court’s Alice decision, and what many perceived as its destabilizing impact on the certainty of patent prosecutions. Leveraging new  data releases, we report on trends in prosecution following the USPTO’s PEG and the Guidance on 112, finding 1) a decline in subject matter rejections and stabilization of subject matter appeals, 2) no discernable increase in 112 rejections, 3) no evidence that small entities were being left behind in Alice-impacted art units by forum shopping by large entities, 4) no noticeable decline in “medical diagnostic” or “software” applications following Alice or Mayo, and 5) more unique words in issued patent claims post Alice. The scripts and techniques we developed to navigate data discontinuities and a lack of labels and complete our analysis are included in this essay.

Read the Essay at: Colleen V. Chien, Nicholas Halkowski, Maria He, and Rodney Swartz, Parsing the Impact of Alice and the PEG, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 20.

Prior Patently-O Patent L.J. Articles:

• Paul R. Michel and John T. Battaglia, eBay, the Right to Exclude, and the Two Classes of Patent Owners, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 11 (2020). (Michel.2020.RightToExclude)
• Thomas F. Cotter, Two Errors in the Ninth Circuit’s Qualcomm Opinion, 2020 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2020). (Cotter.2020.TwoErrors.pdf)
• Jasper L. Tran & J. Sean Benevento, Alice at Five, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 25 (2019) (Tran.2019.AliceatFive.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Implementing Apportionment, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 20 (Chao.2019.ImplementingApportionment)
• Jeremy C. Doerre, Is There Any Need to Resort to a § 101 Exception for Prior Art Ideas?, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 10. (2019.Doerre.AnyNeed)
• Colleen V. Chien, Piloting Applicant-Initiated 101 Deferral Through A Randomized Controlled Trial, 2019 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (2019.Chien.DeferringPSM)
• David A. Boundy, Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem, 2018 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 20. (Boundy.2018.BadGuidance)
• Colleen Chien and Jiun-Ying Wu, Decoding Patentable Subject Matter, 2018 PatentlyO Patent Law Journal 1.
• Paul M. Janicke, Patent Venue: Half Christmas Pie, And Half Crow, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 13. (Janicke.2017.ChristmasPie.pdf)
• Paul M. Janicke, The Imminent Outpouring from the Eastern District of Texas, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2017) (Janicke.2017.Venue)
• Mark A. Lemley, Erik Oliver, Kent Richardson, James Yoon, & Michael Costa, Patent Purchases and Litigation Outcomes, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 15 (Lemley.2016.PatentMarket)
• Bernard Chao and Amy Mapes, An Early Look at Mayo’s Impact on Personalized Medicine, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 10 (Chao.2016.PersonalizedMedicine)
• James E. Daily, An Empirical Analysis of Some Proponents and Opponents of Patent Reform, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (Daily.2016.Professors)
• Tristan Gray–Le Coz and Charles Duan, Apply It to the USPTO: Review of the Implementation of Alice v. CLS Bank in Patent Examination, 2014 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (GrayLeCozDuan)
• Robert L. Stoll, Maintaining Post-Grant Review Estoppel in the America Invents Act: A Call for Legislative Restraint, 2012 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (Stoll.2012.estoppel.pdf)
• Paul Morgan, The Ambiguity in Section 102(a)(1) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 29.  (Morgan.2011.AIAAmbiguities)
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, Derivation and Prior Art Problems with the New Patent Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 12 (sarnoff.2011.derivation.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Not So Confidential: A Call for Restraint in Sealing Court Records, 2011 Patently-O Patent Patent Law Journal 6 (chao.sealedrecords.pdf)
• Benjamin Levi and Rodney R. Sweetland, The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Recommendations to the International Trade Commission (ITC):  Unsound, Unmeasured, and Unauthoritative, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (levi.ftcunsound.pdf)
• Kevin Emerson Collins, An Initial Comment on King Pharmaceuticals: The Printed Matter Doctrine as a Structural Doctrine and Its Implications for Prometheus Laboratories, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 111 (Collins.KingPharma.pdf)
• Robert A. Matthews, Jr., When Multiple Plaintiffs/Relators Sue for the Same Act of Patent False Marking, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 95 (matthews.falsemarking.pdf)
• Kristen Osenga, The Patent Office’s Fast Track Will Not Take Us in the Right Direction, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 89 (Osenga.pdf)
• Peter S. Menell,  The International Trade Commission’s Section 337 Authority, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 79
• Donald S. Chisum, Written Description of the Invention: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 72
• Kevin Collins, An Initial Comment on Ariad: Written Description and the Baseline of Patent Protection for After-Arising Technology, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24
• Etan Chatlynne, Investigating Patent Law’s Presumption of Validity—An Empirical Analysis, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 37
• Michael Kasdan and Joseph Casino, Federal Courts Closely Scrutinizing and Slashing Patent Damage Awards, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24 (Kasdan.Casino.Damages)
• Dennis Crouch, Broadening Federal Circuit Jurisprudence: Moving Beyond Federal Circuit Patent Cases, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 19 (2010)
• Edward Reines and Nathan Greenblatt, Interlocutory Appeals of Claim Construction in the Patent Reform Act of 2009, Part II, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 7  (2010) (Reines.2010)
• Gregory P. Landis & Loria B. Yeadon, Selecting the Next Nominee for the Federal Circuit: Patently Obvious to Consider Diversity, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (2010) (Nominee Diversity)
• Paul Cole, Patentability of Computer Software As Such, 2008 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1. (Cole.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, The Death of Google’s Patents, 2008 Patently O-Pat. L.J. ___ (googlepatents101.pdf)
• Mark R. Patterson, Reestablishing the Doctrine of Patent Exhaustion, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 38
• Arti K. Rai, The GSK Case: An Administrative Perspective, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 36
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, BIO v. DC and the New Need to Eliminate Federal Patent Law Preemption of State and Local Price and Product Regulation, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 30 (Download Sarnoff.BIO.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, Are Administrative Patent Judges Unconstitutional?, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 21. (Duffy.BPAI.pdf)
• Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan, In re Seagate Technology: Willfulness and Waiver, a Summary and a Proposal, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (Casino-Seagate)

Guest post by Associate Professor Yang Yu of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics and Professor Jorge L. Contreras.

As one of us has recently observed (here and here), courts in the U.S. and UK adjudicating cases involving standards-essential patents and FRAND licensing commitments[1] have increasingly issued injunctions preventing one party from pursuing parallel litigation in another jurisdiction (anti-suit injunctions or ASIs).  In response, courts in other countries – namely Germany and France – have begun to issue anti-anti-suit injunctions (AASIs) to prevent parties from seeking ASIs that would hinder their own proceedings.  And even anti-anti-anti suit injunctions (AAASIs) have emerged as more than theoretical possibilities.  Amidst this international jockeying for jurisdiction, commentators have wondered where it will end, and whether every country involved in complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes will get into the ASI game.  In two recent cases, China has now stepped forward as another major jurisdiction in which ASIs are available to litigants.

Conversant v. Huawei Link to translation

The first case involves Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei and Texas-based patent assertion entity Conversant Wireless Licensing (formerly Core Wireless). Conversant holds a globe-spanning portfolio of patents that it acquired from Nokia and which it claims are essential to the 2G, 3G and 4G wireless telecommunications standards developed under the auspices of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).  Conversant sought to license these patents to Huawei, but negotiations broke down and in 2017 and 2018 Conversant asserted the patents against Huawei in multiple jurisdictions.  The UK suit was recently decided by the UK Supreme Court, [2020] UKSC 37, which held that a UK court has the authority to set a global FRAND royalty rate between the parties, notwithstanding its lack of jurisdiction over patents outside the UK (see discussion here).  (This case also involved an unsuccessful 2018 bid by Conversant to obtain an ASI from the UK Court of Chancery, [2018] EWHC (Ch) 2549, against the prosecution of a related suit by ZTE, Huawei’s co-defendant, in the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in China – discussed here).

In response to Conversant’s initial patent assertions, in January 2018 Huawei sought declarations from the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangsu Province, China, that it did not infringe three of Conversant’s Chinese patents and, if it did, that it was entitled to a license on FRAND terms. On September 16, 2019, the Nanjing court declined to issue a declaration regarding infringement, but established a “top down” FRAND royalty for the three Conversant patents (discussed at length in IAM, 23 Sept. 2019 and IAM, 5 Aug. 2020). The decision is currently on appeal at the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) of China.

Meanwhile, in April 2018, Conversant sued Huawei in the District Court in Düsseldorf, Germany, alleging infringement of several European patents. On August 27, 2020, the Düsseldorf court granted Conversant an injunction against Huawei’s sale, use or importation in Germany of devices infringing patent EP1797659 (the German Patent).

On the same day, Huawei applied to the SPC seeking an “act preservation” ruling (a judicial action roughly equivalent to an ASI) to prevent Conversant from enforcing the Düsseldorf injunction until the conclusion of the Chinese proceedings.  The SPC granted the ASI after an ex parte hearing in which Conversant did not participate.  In its decision, the SPC cited a number of factors weighing in favor of granting the ASI, many of which resemble the factors considered by U.S. courts when considering ASIs (see Contreras, The New Extraterritoriality, pp. 265-67):

• the parties to the Chinese and German actions are the same;
• there is partial overlap between the subject matter of the cases;
• Conversant’s enforcement of the German injunction would interfere with the Chinese action;
• in order to avoid the effects of the German injunction, Huawei must either withdraw from the German market or accept the license offered by Conversant in Germany, which sets a global FRAND royalty rate that is 18.3 times higher than the rate set by the Nanjing court;
• imposition of the ASI will not materially prejudice Conversant’s rights in Germany with respect to the merits decisions (as opposed to the injunction decisions) of the German courts;
• imposition of the ASI will not harm the public interest;
• imposition of the ASI will not affect international comity, as the Chinese actions were brought before the German action and the ASI will not affect the subsequent trial in the German case or detract from the legal validity of the German judgment.

Also relevant to the SPC’s decision, though not specifically included in its consideration of the ASI, was the fact that in August, 2018, the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) ruled that the Chinese counterpart to the German Patent was invalid.  Conversant brought an administrative lawsuit challenging that ruling in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.  That matter is still pending.

Upon entry of the ASI, the SPC established a penalty of RMB 1 million per day (approximately US$150,000) if Conversant violates the ASI.  Because the ASI was issued ex parte, Conversant was entitled to apply for reconsideration within five days.  It did so, and its request was denied on September 11, leaving the ASI in force.

Interdigital v. Xiaomi Link to translation

The dispute between InterDigital, a U.S.-based patent assertion entity, and Xiaomi, a Beijing-based electronics firm, relates to five InterDigital patents covering the 3G and 4G standards.   When negotiations for a license failed, on June 9, 2020 Xiaomi sought a declaration by the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court of the appropriate FRAND royalty rate for the patents.  On July 29, InterDigital sued Xiaomi for infringement in the Delhi High Court in India, seeking monetary damages and an injunction. In response, on August 4, Xiaomi asked the Wuhan court for an “act preservation” ruling (ASI) preventing InterDigital from enforcing the injunction while the Wuhan proceeding was in progress.

The Wuhan court granted Xiaomi’s request, reasoning that:

• InterDigital’s filing of parallel litigation in India during the pendency of the Wuhan case showed a lack of respect for the Wuhan court and the case before it;
• The Indian action was intended to interfere with and obstruct the Wuhan case;
• The Indian action is likely to lead to a ruling in conflict with that of the Wuhan court;
• The entry of an injunction in India will likely cause significant harm to Xiaomi;
• Because InterDigital is a non-practicing entity that does not make products, but relies solely on licensing income, it would not be harmed substantially by the inability to seek an injunction against Xiaomi

Accordingly, on September 23, the Wuhan court (a) ordered InterDigital to withdraw its requests for injunctive relief in India, (b) prohibited InterDigital from seeking injunctive relief in China or any other country with respect to the 3G/4G patents currently at issue in the Wuhan case, and (c) prohibited InterDigital from asking another court in China or any other country to determine a FRAND royalty rate or resolve a FRAND dispute relating to the 3G/4G patents at issue.

As in Conversant v. Huawei, the Wuhan court established a penalty of RMB 1 million per day (approximately US$150,000) if InterDigital violates the ASI.  Because the ASI was issued ex parte, InterDigital was entitled to apply for reconsideration within five days.  It did so, and its request appears to have been denied, leaving the ASI in force.

In response to the entry of the ASI by the Wuhan court, InterDigital disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (first reported by IAM) that on September 29, it filed for an anti-anti-suit injunction (AASI) in the Delhi High Court to prevent Xiaomi from enforcing its Chinese ASI.   This is the first instance of which we are aware of an AASI being sought in a FRAND case in India (prior examples being observed in Germany, France and the UK, as discussed in Contreras, Anti-Suit Injunctions All the Way Down).

Discussion

The ASIs issued by Chinese courts in Conversant v. Huawei and InterDigital v. Xiaomi signal a new willingness of Chinese courts to vie for jurisdictional authority in global battles over standard-essential patents.  To some degree, this development was entirely predictable.  Courts in the U.S. and UK have, for several years, sought to resolve global FRAND disputes being litigated on the international stage.  But there is no reason that U.S. and UK courts should be the exclusive venues for such proceedings.  The courts of every country in which the parties have sufficient assets to care about adverse rulings can exert similar authority.  As one of us has previously observed, this inter-jurisdictional competition is rapidly leading to a “race to the bottom” and a “race to the courthouse” in international FRAND disputes.

Yet even more seems to be at play in these two cases than China’s adoption of jurisdictional measures already deployed in the U.S. and UK. The ruling of the Wuhan court is far broader than the Supreme People’s Court’s ruling in Conversant v. Huawei in two major respects that are worth considering.  First, its geographic scope is not limited to the country in which InterDigital sought injunctive relief (India), but extends to all jurisdictions in the world.  As an anti-suit measure, this is more sweeping than any ASI issued in U.S. or other courts in FRAND cases.  Under U.S. and UK law, a court considering a request for an ASI must compare the action in the domestic court with the parallel action in the foreign court and determine whether they address the same matter and whether the resolution of the domestic action would dispose of the foreign action.  This type of analysis is not possible with an ASI that is not directed to a particular foreign action, but prospectively prohibits any attempt to seek an injunction anywhere in the world.

The second major addition by the Wuhan court is the prohibition on InterDigital’s ability to ask any other court in the world to determine a global FRAND rate for its 3G/4G patents.  As such, China has clearly joined the international race to be the jurisdiction of choice for determining FRAND royalty rates in global disputes involving standard-essential patents.

[1] A FRAND commitment is an obligation undertaken by a participant in a standards development organization (SDO) to grant licenses of its patents that are essential to implementation of one of the SDO’s standards on terms that are fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory.  For a primer on standards development and FRAND commitments, see this chapter.

New PatentlyO Law Journal article by retired Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Paul R. Michel and John T. Battaglia, Esq. 

Introduction:

The entire point of a healthy patent system is on spurring invention and investment, by rewarding inventor and investor alike, big or small, with exclusive rights of limited duration, for their inventive risks and contributions. Otherwise, without such patent rights—or with fewer such rights—the incentives to invent diminish, or such inventive resources will re-locate.

Two Different Patent Laws: One for Manufacturers, Another for NPEs

With that backdrop, we address the disparate-treatment problem that currently defines the U.S. patent system. Those entities that manufacture a product claimed by a patent, and successfully enforce that patent in court, often still obtain an injunction, consistent with the “right to exclude others” that Congress granted to “[e]very patent. But for nearly 15 years, those entitles that invest in invention rights and buy and license patents—be they university research arms or non-practicing licensing entities (NPEs or so-called “trolls”)—often haven’t bothered even seeking injunctive relief in litigation. Why?

The answer is that the federal courts over time have misunderstood and misapplied the Supreme Court’s landmark 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C.

Read more at Paul R. Michel and John T. Battaglia, eBay, the Right to Exclude, and the Two Classes of Patent Owners, 2020 Patently-O Law Journal 11 (2020).

Prior Patently-O Patent L.J. Articles:

• Thomas F. Cotter, Two Errors in the Ninth Circuit’s Qualcomm Opinion, 2020 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2020). (Cotter.2020.TwoErrors.pdf)
• Jasper L. Tran & J. Sean Benevento, Alice at Five, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 25 (2019) (Tran.2019.AliceatFive.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Implementing Apportionment, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 20 (Chao.2019.ImplementingApportionment)
• Jeremy C. Doerre, Is There Any Need to Resort to a § 101 Exception for Prior Art Ideas?, 2019 PatentlyO L.J. 10. (2019.Doerre.AnyNeed)
• Colleen V. Chien, Piloting Applicant-Initiated 101 Deferral Through A Randomized Controlled Trial, 2019 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (2019.Chien.DeferringPSM)
• David A. Boundy, Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem, 2018 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 20. (Boundy.2018.BadGuidance)
• Colleen Chien and Jiun-Ying Wu, Decoding Patentable Subject Matter, 2018 PatentlyO Patent Law Journal 1.
• Paul M. Janicke, Patent Venue: Half Christmas Pie, And Half Crow, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 13. (Janicke.2017.ChristmasPie.pdf)
• Paul M. Janicke, The Imminent Outpouring from the Eastern District of Texas, 2017 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (2017) (Janicke.2017.Venue)
• Mark A. Lemley, Erik Oliver, Kent Richardson, James Yoon, & Michael Costa, Patent Purchases and Litigation Outcomes, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 15 (Lemley.2016.PatentMarket)
• Bernard Chao and Amy Mapes, An Early Look at Mayo’s Impact on Personalized Medicine, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 10 (Chao.2016.PersonalizedMedicine)
• James E. Daily, An Empirical Analysis of Some Proponents and Opponents of Patent Reform, 2016 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (Daily.2016.Professors)
• Tristan Gray–Le Coz and Charles Duan, Apply It to the USPTO: Review of the Implementation of Alice v. CLS Bank in Patent Examination, 2014 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1. (GrayLeCozDuan)
• Robert L. Stoll, Maintaining Post-Grant Review Estoppel in the America Invents Act: A Call for Legislative Restraint, 2012 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (Stoll.2012.estoppel.pdf)
• Paul Morgan, The Ambiguity in Section 102(a)(1) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 29.  (Morgan.2011.AIAAmbiguities)
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, Derivation and Prior Art Problems with the New Patent Act, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 12 (sarnoff.2011.derivation.pdf)
• Bernard Chao, Not So Confidential: A Call for Restraint in Sealing Court Records, 2011 Patently-O Patent Patent Law Journal 6 (chao.sealedrecords.pdf)
• Benjamin Levi and Rodney R. Sweetland, The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Recommendations to the International Trade Commission (ITC):  Unsound, Unmeasured, and Unauthoritative, 2011 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 1 (levi.ftcunsound.pdf)
• Kevin Emerson Collins, An Initial Comment on King Pharmaceuticals: The Printed Matter Doctrine as a Structural Doctrine and Its Implications for Prometheus Laboratories, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 111 (Collins.KingPharma.pdf)
• Robert A. Matthews, Jr., When Multiple Plaintiffs/Relators Sue for the Same Act of Patent False Marking, 2010 Patently-O Patent Law Journal 95 (matthews.falsemarking.pdf)
• Kristen Osenga, The Patent Office’s Fast Track Will Not Take Us in the Right Direction, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 89 (Osenga.pdf)
• Peter S. Menell,  The International Trade Commission’s Section 337 Authority, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 79
• Donald S. Chisum, Written Description of the Invention: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 72
• Kevin Collins, An Initial Comment on Ariad: Written Description and the Baseline of Patent Protection for After-Arising Technology, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24
• Etan Chatlynne, Investigating Patent Law’s Presumption of Validity—An Empirical Analysis, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 37
• Michael Kasdan and Joseph Casino, Federal Courts Closely Scrutinizing and Slashing Patent Damage Awards, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 24 (Kasdan.Casino.Damages)
• Dennis Crouch, Broadening Federal Circuit Jurisprudence: Moving Beyond Federal Circuit Patent Cases, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 19 (2010)
• Edward Reines and Nathan Greenblatt, Interlocutory Appeals of Claim Construction in the Patent Reform Act of 2009, Part II, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 7  (2010) (Reines.2010)
• Gregory P. Landis & Loria B. Yeadon, Selecting the Next Nominee for the Federal Circuit: Patently Obvious to Consider Diversity, 2010 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (2010) (Nominee Diversity)
• Paul Cole, Patentability of Computer Software As Such, 2008 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1. (Cole.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, The Death of Google’s Patents, 2008 Patently O-Pat. L.J. ___ (googlepatents101.pdf)
• Mark R. Patterson, Reestablishing the Doctrine of Patent Exhaustion, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 38
• Arti K. Rai, The GSK Case: An Administrative Perspective, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 36
• Joshua D. Sarnoff, BIO v. DC and the New Need to Eliminate Federal Patent Law Preemption of State and Local Price and Product Regulation, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 30 (Download Sarnoff.BIO.pdf)
• John F. Duffy, Are Administrative Patent Judges Unconstitutional?, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 21. (Duffy.BPAI.pdf)
• Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan, In re Seagate Technology: Willfulness and Waiver, a Summary and a Proposal, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1 (Casino-Seagate)