Alcatel-Lucent’s patent victory over Microsoft is only the first in a string of cases the company filed when it was just Lucent over patents that the original Bell Labs had developed. This year will see 3 more cases involving Microsoft, Dell and Gateway over various digital audio-visual technologies. A jury in the U.S. Dist. Court, San Diego gave Alcatel-Lucent a $1.52 billion award against Microsoft (CD Feb 23 p1). Alcatel-Lucent wouldn’t comment on the outcome’s effect on future suits. Microsoft denied the decision would have any effect.
Court of International Trade activity
At a March public hearing, the International Trade Commission (ITC) will set penalties against Qualcomm for infringing a Broadcom patent. In Dec., the ITC upheld an administrative law judge’s decision that Qualcomm violated a Broadcom patent for a technology that helps wireless phones conserve battery power when out of cellular range. Qualcomm is happy to come to the hearing, it said. “We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the unreasonable, overreaching and anticompetitive nature of what Broadcom is seeking,” Lou Lupin, gen. counsel, said: “Industry partners, who Broadcom deliberately attempted to exclude from the ITC proceeding while targeting their products, and other interested government, industry and public interest organizations will have the opportunity to show the harmful impact Broadcom’s requests would have on millions of consumers by depriving them of wireless broadband services.” The remedy hearing may be the first the ITC has held in its growing patent docket, Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note, noting that the case was the subject of a Wall Street Journal editorial and an FCC filing, “both warning the ITC of dire consequences of banning imports of CDMA 3G handsets.” Injunctions are nearly automatic in ITC patent infringement decisions, which the President can veto, though vetoes are rare, the analysts said. “The question here will be the scope of the injunction,” Stifel Nicolaus said: “The ITC’s decision to postpone the decision and hold a hearing could signal an openness to overturning the ALJ recommendation to keep the scope of the injunction very narrow. But we expect a full court press against the broader remedy.”
BERKELEY, Cal. -- Antitrust authorities should let standards-development groups adopt strong rules to curb patent holders, a standards body said. The group, the VMEBus International Trade Assn. (VITA), got DoJ’s blessing in the fall for rules that VITA outside counsel Robert Skitol told us are the strictest known of their kind. DoJ said the proposed rules would benefit competition, so the Dept. wouldn’t fight them under a Sherman Act ban on price fixing. VITA said last week that members adopted the rules 35-2.
Among German priorities in assuming the EU Presidency Jan. 1 will be progress on revising the EU e-communications regulatory framework (NRF), its work program says. Telecom experts disputed whether Germany’s tense relations with the EC over controversial national legislation poised to grant Deutsche Telekom (DT) a regulatory break for its new fiber networks could stymie that progress.
The U.S. Appeals Court, Federal Circuit, Fri. ordered a lower court to reconsider a decision that denied Nokia’s request to stay a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Qualcomm. Last Nov., Qualcomm, which pioneered CDMA technology used by Nokia, sued Nokia in federal court in Cal. alleging infringement of 12 of its patents. The lawsuit is part of a long-standing battle between the companies also being fought at the EU and before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
“Africa needs you to think differently” by leap-frogging to 3G CDMA mobile technologies, African CDMA Forum chmn. William Hearmon told govts. and regulators at a recent conference in London. CDMA is the best way to bring the power of knowledge to a continent taking to mobile telephony in a big way, he said. The GSM Assn. (GSMA) and analysts disagreed, saying the number of its connections exceeds CDMA’s by so much CDMA can never win the “volume game.”
SAN JOSE -- FBI Dir. Robert Mueller promised his agency would use kid gloves with firms breaking what Mueller termed a “code of silence” against reporting network security breaches. Speaking at the RSA Conference here, Mueller said most intrusions go unreported due to fears of bad press, loss of competitive advantage or infringing privacy.
The fight against mandatory storage of Internet and phone traffic data isn’t lost but rejection has become “more than extremely difficult,” a key European Parliament (EP) foe of data retention told us Thurs. Last week, the Justice & Home Affairs Council approved amendments to a European Commission-proposed directive (CD Dec 5 p12) differing from those MEPs adopted weeks earlier. Ministers apparently got the heads of the EP’s 2 largest political groups to back the Council version, said Alexander Alvaro, author of a civil liberties panel report criticizing data retention. That backing means the measure likely will adopted in next week’s plenary session.
When the USF was new, Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t halfway through his first term. Even so, the venerable program still has a startling capacity to make news.
Gemstar-TV Guide International and Scientific- Atlanta’s (S-A) agreement to cross-license electronic program guide (EPG) technology marks the end of a multi- year legal battle that wound through federal district and appeals courts as well as the International Trade Commission. Gemstar’s patent infringement suit against S- A, which dates from the late 1990s, also involved EchoStar and Pioneer, both of whom reached multi-million dollar settlements with Gemstar last year. The agreements take effect July 1, CFO Brian Urban said.