The first article that I read today was about how Nokia streamlined several of their patent assertions against HTC with the ITC last Friday. Nokia filed a motion for partial termination that saw three of its patent complaints dropped of an original nine patent assertions. However Nokia only has four patents remaining in the lawsuit due to the withdrawal of an assertion back in October of 2012 and the reference of a patent claim to arbitration by the ITC; Nokia also dropped several claims from one patent. Thus Nokia will now focus on four patents at their upcoming evidentiary trial to begin on May 31st. Apparently this is the standard number of patents to actually make it through to this point from the original patent suit itself (for a case involving nine or ten original patent assertions). The patents that were dropped were a light guide patent and two patents related to database synchronization. This was likely because Nokia lost an earlier claim construction battle that would make it much harder for them to assert their patents against HTC.
Regardless, Nokia has already obtained one German injunction against HTC at this point, although HTC claimed "its business would not be affected". Nokia has filed forty patents in total against HTC in both Germany and the United States, so dropping three patent complaints may not seem to be too large of a hindrance for Nokia. However HTC is countersuing Nokia in Germany with assertions on a power saving patent in both Munich and Mannheim. HTC's subsidiary S3 Graphics is also suing Nokia over a video patent supposedly infringed upon by Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip. Thus it seems that the Nokia HTC patent battle is in full swing, and it will be interesting to follow the battle to see who comes out ahead - if anyone actually does come out ahead.
Link: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/04/nokia-streamlines-itc-case-against-htc.html
I also read this article and found it very interesting that they have gone from 9 patents to 7 and now to 4. Do you think they will go below 4?
ReplyDeleteI'd say it seems quite possible they will go below four. But it depends on exactly what those four patents are; I feel that it's likely only two or three will hold up.
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