Bayer
In August 2005, plaintiff Abbott Labs filed suit in the Northern District of California against Bayer and Roche, two of the leading manufacturers of blood glucose meters and strips, asserting infringement of two of plaintiff's patents (Abbott Labs, et al. v. Roche, Bayer). After our client Bayer won summary judgment on one of the patents, the case was reassigned to a new judge, who consolidated it for trial with a related set of cases involving Becton-Dickinson and set a trial date within six weeks on the second patent. The court broke the trial into three phases. Roche settled before trial. After a six-day bench trial in June 2008, in a 54-page opinion, the court found in Bayer's favor on all claims. The court invalidated every asserted claim as obvious, and also found the patent unenforceable because two Abbott employees concealed material information from the Patent Office during prosecution. Bayer has now prevailed on both patents and all asserted claims.
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Echostar Communications Corporation
In Forgent Networks, Inc. v. Echostar Communications Corporation, et al. (Eastern District of Texas), we obtained a defense jury verdict for EchoStar in a patent lawsuit brought by Forgent against essentially the entire cable and satellite television industry, including EchoStar, DIRECTV, Comcast, Cable One, Time Warner, Charter, and Cox, as well as Motorola, Digeo, and Scientific-Atlanta, in Tyler, Texas. The case involved patents allegedly directed to DVRs. Forgent alleged that it invented the DVR in 1991. All defendants other than EchoStar settled shortly before trial, leaving EchoStar as the sole defendant. In May 2007, after approximately an hour of deliberations, an eight-person jury found all of the asserted claims invalid as anticipated, obvious, and lacking an adequate written description. EchoStar did not contest infringement at trial and argued only invalidity. At the time, this was only the second defense jury verdict in a patent case in the Eastern District of Texas.
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Novell, Inc.
In SCO v. Novell, Inc. (District of Utah), we won a multi-million dollar award in representation of Novell in a high-profile trial in the District of Utah regarding Novell's right to royalty payments from UNIX software licenses granted by SCO. We won dismissal with prejudice on behalf of Novell in two software patent cases (IAS v Novell and France Telecom v Novell, D. Del.), after decisive pre-trial victories. We currently represent Novell in litigation brought by the SCO Group (SCO v. Novell, D. Ut.) that is embroiling the Linux industry. SCO has sued Novell for "slander of title" based on Novell's contention that ownership of the UNIX copyrights that are at issue in broader litigation initiated by SCO did not transfer to SCO. We won summary judgment for Novell in a much-watched suit brought by SCO concerning ownership of the copyrights to UNIX and UnixWare. In 2003, SCO claimed that Linux was an illegal knockoff of the UNIX operating system, which SCO alleged it had purchased from Novell. The court held that, as a matter of law, Novell was in fact the owner of those copyrights. The Wall Street Journal described the ruling as "a boon to the 'open source' software movement...that has become an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system." The matter then proceeded to a bench trial, at which Novell was awarded over $3 million on its counterclaims. The matter is currently on appeal before the 10th Circuit.
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Pioneer Corporation
In Pioneer Corp. v. Samsung SDI Co. (United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas), we represented Pioneer and its affiliates in two patent disputes with Samsung involving plasma display panel (“PDP”) technology. Pioneer and Samsung are two of the largest manufacturers of plasma display panels. Pioneer is the plaintiff in both disputes, one of which is a declaratory judgment action. In September 2006, Pioneer filed an action against Samsung and its affiliates in the Eastern District of Texas, asserting infringement of two of Pioneer's patents. Samsung SDI then filed counterclaims, asserting that Pioneer and its affiliates infringed Samsung's PDP patents. On October 28, 2008, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas decided that three Samsung entities had willfully infringed the patents in suit and awarded Pioneer $59.3 million in compensatory damages. The case has since settled.
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Topcon Positioning Systems v. Javad Ashjaee and Javad Navigation Systems
Successful defense of Russian technology company and inventor concerning global positioning systems technology.
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Rosen v. PCCW Global (C.D. Cal.)
Won summary judgment for communications provider PCCW Global in matter alleging that PCCW had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (2010)
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