Pro Se Loses

by Dennis Crouch

Huang v. Huawei (Fed. Cir. 2018)

This is a fairly ridiculous case. Acting pro se Mr. Huang sued Huawei for infringing three of his patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,744,653, 6,999,331, and RE45259 (high speed memory chips).

At the start of discovery, Huang agreed to a protective order, including a designation for “attorney’s eyes only.” Huawei then used that “attorneys eyes only” designation when it disclosed the technical information for its accused chips.  Since he had no attorney, Huang was unable to look at the disclosures.  When Huawei later motioned for summary judgment of non-infringement, Huang responded with a number of previously undisclosed reverse-engineering figures and declarations from undisclosed witnesses. The court granted a motion to strike that purported evidence as well as the summary judgment motion and awarded attorney fees to Huawei (but only $600,000) after finding his litigation behavior “constituted bad faith and an abuse of the judicial process.”

On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed — holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion.

Lessons learned here:

20 thoughts on “Pro Se Loses

  1. 7

    David Stein at 2 writes, “Big companies will commit “efficient infringement,” betting on your lack of resources and the current skew of patent law to protect them (or, as Mr. Huang learned, even reward them).”

    You probably should read the opinion.

    “In support [of its fees request], Huawei submitted declarations stating
    that Mr. Huang repeatedly contacted Huawei’s inhouse
    counsel about settlement, despite Huawei’s outside
    counsel’s repeated instructions to Mr. Huang not to do so.
    The declarations asserted that Mr. Huang had stated that
    he sued Huawei because he believed the case would
    quickly settle for $1.5 million, that he did not want to
    share revenue with a lawyer, and that he would continue
    filing motions to force Huawei to incur legal fees. ”

    Assuming all these declarants were not lying, Mr. Huang here hardly seems a character deserving of your sympathy.

    He also accused the magistrate judge of abusing his discretion, and claimed he was doing so deliberately ….

    He dug his own grave. Every “little guy” who loses against a “big corp” is not always a case study in the unfairness of the system.

  2. 5

    link to qz.com

    So, directed to the abstract idea of a very fast abacus like the ancient Egyptians already had. Step 2, there is nothing more. Everything is just conventional components strung together as part of the abstract idea to build an abacus.

    1. 5.1

      Lol,

      I cannot help but think of one of my favorite words

      Anthropomorphication.

      (b-b-but machines are a proxy for humans, and this is “directed to” something a human might do – who cares if that human would need to “(Another way to see it: if you want to go toe-to-toe with Summit yourself, settle in. You’ll be making a calculation every single second for the next 6.3 billion years.)“)

      Pizzas would cost a bit extra.

    2. 5.2

      Supercomputers have myriad uses, many of which are essential to national security and the general welfare of the public. In the US, for example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses supercomputers to predict climate trends and model weather patterns. The Energy Department uses them to run nuclear simulations, and to mine data to find oil and natural gas deposits. The National Security Agency and similar government bodies rely on supercomputers to crack encryption codes. These powerful machines are necessary for handling the massive datasets required advanced genomic research, one of the most promising fields in medical science.

      More powerful machine learning and neural-network capabilities would advance all these fields, and, presumably, Summit will lead the way.

      The entire effort to deny patent protection to claims to machines because of the “purported” scrivining that claims “are really” not to what the claims are on their face, but some “underlying “thing,” is nothing more than an attempt by (an incorrect) branch of the government to impose what it thinks as to what the law should be written to cover.

      All of the efforts to “gist” or “divine” or to take the claim and rewrite that claim in a manner in order to “get to” what is “really” being claimed is – and should be – an affront to attorneys everywhere.

      The affront of course is not limited to 35 USC 101 (albeit that is where the most egregious example of what the Court is doing runs afoul of the law written by Congress).

      Take as well 35 USC 112. As I have noted, this section of law is both a restraint AND an allocation of power. For it is within 35 USC 112 that Congress set forth exactly which entity it is that gets to decide what the invention “really is.”

      And that designation was not the Court.

      Note as well the absolute silence as to these points from all of those that would celebrate the broken scoreboard provided by the Court, from academics to the more mundane anti-software (and thus, plainly anti-) patent pundits.

  3. 4

    The lesson is unless you have a lot of time and are very intelligent, don’t sue bigger companies for patent infringement without a good attorney. This has always been the case, by the way.

    DS Suing for patent infringement is the sport of kings.

    Patent procurement is also for the elites. Always has been.

    DS The days of “Flash of Genius”-style garage-workshop inventorship are over.

    Right. Now you invent in your basement or office by sitting around and thinking about what it would be “cool” for a computer or a robot to do. Only an i d i 0t or an autistic person would actually try to make something in his garage.

    1. 4.1

      Patent procurement is also for the elites. Always has been.

      Most definitely not so.

      Do you need me to hold your hand (again) and present the link (again) to the PatentDocs article for the award-winning (and that’s an award from an historical society – not a patent society) work on the foundations of the US patent system?

      I also note the LACK of”umbrage” from you on this “sport of kings” angel – it’s as if you only parade around about the 1percenters and ultra rich when you want to misrepresent the lowest cost form of innovation that exists…

      …and yes, your duplicity is (again) noted.

    2. 4.2

      MM, I agree with a lot of what you say but c’mon! No need to insult autistics to make your point. As a patent attorney you should know or suspect that many of us are on the spectrum and would not take kindly to that comment (only sort of joking…)

      1. 4.2.1

        The item that you SHOULD be “not taking kindly to” is the thing that you (probably) “agree with a lot of what you say.”

        You appear to not like the particular denigration, all the while missing the fact that WHAT Malcolm attempts to denigrate is the thing that should not be taken kindly to.

        Wake up son.

      2. 4.2.2

        No need to insult autistics to make your point.

        That was a miserably failed attempt to parody what a logic patentista might say about a person struggling to innovate using “iron age” materials.

        So, yes, I agree and sincerely apologize. I have many many acquaintances on the spectrum and should have checked my comment with greater care.

          1. 4.2.2.1.1

            If you want to call that “integrity” you are verily mistaken Quasar18.

            Let’s see where you go off the deep end…
            Ah yes, need not look too far: “I agree with a lot of what you say

            I see the late Ned Heller’s “You agree with me so you must be a genius” line of reasoning at play.

            (that did not work out too well for him – it will not work out for you)

            1. 4.2.2.1.1.1

              “If you want to call that “integrity” you are verily mistaken ”

              Izzat an obscure Google Life Sciences reference?

  4. 2

    Lessons learned here:

    Suing for patent infringement is the sport of kings. If you’re not in the Fortune 500, then (a) you can’t afford it and (b) if you can, the courts will presume that you’re a patent troll and will bend over backwards to invalidate your patents.

    The days of “Flash of Genius”-style garage-workshop inventorship are over. Big companies will commit “efficient infringement,” betting on your lack of resources and the current skew of patent law to protect them (or, as Mr. Huang learned, even reward them).

    1. 2.1

      I don’t know where you got this from reading the decision. Mr. Huang had a fool for a client. His claim may have had merit, but we’ll never know. He has no one to blame for this outcome but his own stupidity.

    2. 2.2

      I don’t know where you got this from after reading the opinion. Mr Huang had a fool for a client. He may have had a real claim, but we’ll never know. He has no one to blame for this outcome but his own stupidity.

Comments are closed.