GLG News by Hardware / Computer Patent Experts: Lawyers

Rambus just announced that one of its senior legal advisors has left the firm.  No wonder.  Rambus has been struggling with the same legal issues for years now; and with the EC now digging into that same mess, the end is nowhere near in sight.

There is significant confusion in the press over the status of the BRCM/QCOM dispute in Santa Ana.  The simple summary is that BRCM right now faces a choice: delay the final decision and have a chance at an extra $20M, or accelerate to a likely injunction but waive any right to that extra cash. ...

IGT just filed for summary judgment in one of its patent disputes involving rival BYI.  The motion is clever, but I suspect that it will fail, because IGT's motion requires the court to skip several analytical steps that the court should not be willing to skip.

The analyst community has paid significant attention to the fact that the Santa Ana court is now reopening the BRCM patent case to rethink the question of whether QCOM's infringement was willful.  The interest is misplaced.  The original willfulness determination was important to understand...

One of the concerns facing Rambus as it prepares for trial this January is the worry that the court will simply defer to the FTC's factual conclusions about Rambus' behavior at JEDEC and the implications thereof.  This week, that risk was diminished, as the court not only declined to defer, but...

The Third Circuit has reinstated significant parts of BRCM's antitrust case against QCOM.  In this post, I sketch some implications of that decision.

Last week's decision in the Align/Ormco appeal is hard to parse, and indeed on first blush might look like a win for Ormco.  A more careful analysis, however, reveals that Align's charaterization is closer to right: Ormco "won" a few claims, but those wins are far from strong, and they were paired...

The long-awaited patent case over EPO is about to start.  Amgen's core challenge will be to show that Roche's CERA is indeed an EPO variant that falls under Amgen's remaining EPO patents.  Roche on the other side will try to show that CERA is different enough that it ought not be considered...

A few days ago, the judge in Santa Ana invited QCOM to petition for a new trial on the question of whether QCOM's infringement of the relevant BRCM patents was willful.  QCOM might as a result get a fresh shot on willfulness, but make no mistake: the original ruling is still important as a signal...

The European Commission came out yesterday and announced tentative charges against Rambus over that firm's involvement with the standard-setting organization JEDEC.  The company downplayed the new allegations as if they are mere repeats of charges already addressed by the FTC.  But the EC...