HPC has obtained excellent results for clients in patent, trade secret, and antitrust cases involving a wide range of electrical, mechanical, chemical, and pharmaceutical technologies. We invite you to browse through the cases identified below to see how we have helped our clients with their technologically complex legal issues. These cases represent some of the largest patent infringement verdicts and antitrust settlements throughout the nation.
(Pending before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania)
Along with co-counsel, HPC represents a group of direct purchasers of the brand name pharmaceutical AndroGel® in this antitrust lawsuit against several leading drug companies accused of wrongly delaying generic versions of the popular testosterone drug.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III found in favor of HPC’s clients in January 2023, holding that a patent infringement lawsuit filed by several of the antitrust defendants was objectively baseless.
The direct purchaser plaintiffs contend that the defendants filed the infringement lawsuit as part of an anticompetitive scheme to prevent generic versions of AndroGel® from reaching the market. The Court’s ruling establishes as a matter of law one of the elements of sham litigation, thus eliminating the need for the plaintiffs to prove that at trial.
HPC represented a class of direct purchasers of Lidoderm®. The antitrust case stemmed from litigation in which Teikoku and Endo sought to enforce several patents against generic drug manufacturer Watson Pharmaceuticals in order to delay market entry of Watson’s generic lidocaine patch. The Direct Purchasers alleged that Teikoku and Endo’s asserted patents were invalid, not infringed, and/or unenforceable.
Law360 recognized the Lidoderm Antitrust case as one of the biggest competition cases of 2017: https://www.law360.com/
The case was settled for a substantial fee in 2018.
On March 20, 2013, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Two-Way Media LLC, a company based in Colorado, on patent claims asserted against several AT&T entities and its related regional carriers. The TWM patents concern audio and video streaming, and were asserted against AT&T’s U-verse television service (which employs Microsoft’s Mediaroom software). HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that AT&T infringed the claims in two patents under the doctrine of equivalents. The jury further found that AT&T had not proven the patent claims invalid, and awarded significant damages that represented the seventh largest verdict in Texas and 71st largest verdict nationally for 2013, according to VerdictSearch. It also ranked first in Texas for the largest Intellectual Property verdict of 2015, according to VerdictSearch. After adding a significant sum of pre-judgment interest, the court entered a Final Judgment in favor of Two-Way Media.
On March 19, 2015, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Final Judgment in favor of Two-Way Media. Leslie Payne of HPC argued for Two-Way Media before the Federal Circuit in December 2014. Click Here To See The Federal Circuit Opinion. A settlement was announced in 2015, after the Federal Circuit affirmance.
Prior to the lawsuit against AT&T, HPC also represented Two-Way Media in a case against America Online. The AOL settled during trial, after a favorable Markman ruling. That settlement is confidential.
On May 26, 2011, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Fractus, S.A, an antenna company based in Barcelona, Spain, on all trial claims asserted against Samsung. The claims were spread across four related patents in Fractus’ Multilevel Patent family, generally covering multiband antennas used in portable communication devices, such as cell phones. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that Samsung infringed the claims literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, as well as finding that Samsung’s infringement was willful. After finding that Samsung had not proven the patent claims invalid, the jury entered a verdict awarding significant damages that represented the tenth largest verdict in Texas and 69th largest verdict nationally for 2011, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the fifth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2011, according to VerdictSearch., according to VerdictSearch. After damages were significantly enhanced by the district court judge based on the willful infringement, the court entered a final judgment for a substantial sum. The district court judge also entered an ongoing royalty rate for future infringement in the amount of 60 cents per unit for each infringing phone or tablet sold by Samsung after the date of the jury verdict.
Samsung appealed the judgment to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where HPC took the lead on the appellate briefing, working closely with its co-counsel Susman Godfrey. After oral argument at the Federal Circuit, a settlement was announced in2014.
Prior to trial, the HPC Fractus legal team also assisted in licensing the Fractus patent portfolio to several other parties, resulting in significant licensing fees. Most of those parties, including LG Electronics, Blackberry, HTC, and Kyocera, were the subject of lawsuits brought by HPC and Susman Godfrey that settled before trial.
On April 8, 2011, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Commil USA, LLC on all infringement claims asserted against Cisco Systems, Inc. HPC tried the case with Sayles Werbner.
The jury, which deliberated less than two hours, found the patent valid and decided that Cisco induced infringement on a patent for wireless technology developed by three Israeli engineers. The jury awarded significant damages that represented the seventh largest verdict in Texas and 35th largest verdict nationally for 2011, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the fourth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2011, according to VerdictSearch., according to VerdictSearch.
After awarding significant pre-judgment interest, the court entered a final judgment in favor of Commil.
After trial, the case went up on appeal before the Federal Circuit. Based on the jury charge concerning inducing infringement, the Federal Circuit ordered a new trial. In its opinion, the Federal Circuit held (for the first time) that a defendant’s good faith belief in invalidity is a defense to inducement and should have been included in the jury charge.
HPC and its co-counsel then appealed the case to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the Federal Circuit had wrongly recognized this defense to inducement. HPC attorneys, including Miranda Jones, took the lead on the briefing to the Supreme Court. On May 26, 2015, the Supreme Court issued a 6-2 decision in favor of Commil. In this landmark decision, the Supreme Court held that an accused infringer’s good faith belief regarding patent invalidity is not a defense to inducing infringement. Click Here To See The Supreme Court Opinion. Although the Federal Circuit ultimately vacated the infringement verdict on remand from the Supreme Court, the ruling that HPC obtained from the Supreme Court will have a lasting impact on patent litigation, making it easier for a patent owner to prove inducing infringement.
Rembrandt Wireless retained HPC and its co-counsel Ahmad, Zavitsanos and Anaipakos (AZA) to enforce US Patent Nos. 8,023,580 and 8,457,228 against Samsung. The ‘580 and ‘228 patents cover technology developed at Paradyne Corporation which allows modems that communicate using different modulation types to coexist in the same network. The ‘580 and ‘228 patents were asserted against Samsung devices that include Bluetooth Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) capabilities. The Samsung EDR devices use both a GFSK (Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying) modulation technique and a faster PSK (Phase Shift Keying) modulation technique that allows data rate transmissions 2 or 3 times as fast the original FSK modulation used in the original Bluetooth specifications.
Samsung sought to invalidate the Rembrandt patents through a series of 13 separate IPR filings before the US Patent & Trademark Office. Certain claims of the ‘580 and ‘228 patents survived these repeated IPR attacks, and HPC and AZA proceeded to trial in the Eastern District of Texas on those claims. On February 13, 2015, the jury, after deliberating less than one hour, found that the asserted claims were valid and infringed by the accused Samsung products with the Bluetooth EDR functionality, and awarded Rembrandt significant damages that represented the 23rd largest verdict in Texas in 2015, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the sixth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2015, according to VerdictSearch.
After trial, Samsung appealed the verdict on multiple grounds. HPC took the lead on the appellate briefing, working closely with its co-counsel at AZA. Michael Heim at HPC successfully argued the appeal on behalf of Rembrandt, resulting in an affirmance on all liability issues and on the damages methodology used to calculate damages. In addition to these affirmances, the Federal Circuit remanded for further consideration of a marking issue.
Rockwell Automation challenged five different patents belonging to Automation Middleware Solutions. Attorneys for Heim, Payne & Chorush LLP were retained to assist with the inter partes review proceeding. In each of the five IPRs, the PTAB declined to institute trial, finding that Petitioners had failed to show a reasonable likelihood of success on their obviousness challenges for multiple reasons.
Wi-LAN retained HPC to represent it in defending against an IPR petition challenging Wi-LAN’s patent relating to pre-allocating identifiers to wireless devices when handing over communications from one base station to another. The PTAB declined to institute trial, finding that Patent Owner had adequately established conception and diligence needed to antedate a reference that was part of the proposed obviousness combination.
Wi-LAN retained HPC to represent it in defending against two IPR petitions challenging Wi-LAN’s patent relating to methods of operating a mobile device by allocating available bandwidth to logical channel queues having differing qualities of service. The PTAB declined to institute trial in both IPRs, finding that Patent Owner had adequately established written description support in a parent application for the claims thus antedating asserted references and that Petitioner had failed to show that one asserted reference was entitled to its claimed provisional application priority date.
Weatherford retained HPC in partnership with another firm to represent it as Petitioner challenging several patents on which Weatherford had been sued. After a consolidated trial, the PTAB held in final written decisions that all challenged claims in the three challenged patents were unpatentable on two different obviousness grounds.
Rosetta retained HPC to represent it in defending against an IPR petition challenging Rosetta’s patent concerning a wireless intelligent personal server. In its Petition, LG presented two grounds based on combinations of seven different references. The PTAB declined to institute trial, finding that LG’s evidence did not show that the references relied upon qualified as prior art.
Red Rock Analytics, LLC retained HPC to represent it in a patent infringement case against Samsung. Several months later, Unified Patents Inc. file an inter partes review petition challenging Red Rock’s patent. Red Rock retained a partnering law firm to serve as counsel-of-record in the Unified IPR. HPC attorneys worked closely with attorneys from the firm to plan and draft Red Rock’s preliminary response. The PTAB declined to institute trial, finding that Petitioner had failed to show a reasonable likelihood of success on their obviousness challenges for multiple reasons.
On February 5, 2018, Samsung filed three different IPRs challenging Red Rock’s patent relating to calibration of IQ imbalances in transceivers. Red Rock retained a partnering firm to serve as counsel-of-record in the Samsung IPRs. HPC attorneys worked closely with attorneys from the firm to plan and draft Red Rock’s preliminary responses. The PTAB declined to institute trial in all three proceedings, finding that Petitioner had failed to show a reasonable likelihood of success on their obviousness challenges for multiple reasons.
HPC represented PACT in its patent infringement lawsuit against Xilinx, the world’s largest manufacturer of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (“FPGAs”), and Avnet, the primary distributor of Xilinx’s FPGAs. PACT is a German company that pioneered the “coarse grained” technology used in modern FPGAs, including revolutionary bus interface systems and dynamically reconfigurable processing cells. PACT’s patent portfolio covers that technology, amongst others. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
In May 2012, a jury returned a verdict in favor of PACT. After only a few hours of deliberation, the jury found the patents valid and returned a verdict that Xilinx willfully infringed two of PACT’s patents. The jury awarded significant damages that represented the eighteenth largest verdict in Texas, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the fourth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2015, according to VerdictSearch.
In September 2013, the court entered a final judgment that significantly enhanced damages and awarded PACT attorneys’ fees, interest and costs.
A settlement was announced in 2012.
Attorneys at HPC represented MicroUnity in its patent enforcement efforts starting in 2003. MicroUnity obtained numerous patents covering its pioneering work related to the processing of media data in computer systems. HPC, along with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey, filed multiple lawsuits against the following defendants: Intel, Dell, AMD, Sony, Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.
MicroUnity is a Silicon Valley company that was founded in the late 1980’s by John Moussouris, a former founder of MIPS) to develop new microprocessor designs and an instruction set that more efficiently processed media data in a general purpose microprocessor. Although the company never realized its goal of commercially manufacturing and selling its microprocessors, the company’s development efforts extended microprocessors beyond their historical role as calculating and control devices to make them instrumental in the processing of media data in personal computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, televisions and other digital consumer and communications devices. MicroUnity’s Media Processor patent portfolio covers these design innovations and the novel multimedia instruction set extensions that it developed.
HPC attorneys successfully represented MicroUnity in its patent infringement lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas against many of the world’s leading microprocessor companies including Intel and AMD; against game console manufacturers such as Sony; and against the bulk of the smartphone industry for its use of ARM-based processors. HPC took a leading role in the enforcement strategy of the MicroUnity portfolio throughout its representation and also took the lead on the infringement and validity aspects of the case, steering MicroUnity to repeated victories throughout the representation.
All of the MicroUnity lawsuits settled prior to the start of trial, on terms that have been exceptionally favorable to MicroUnity. For example, Intel publicly disclosed that it licensed the MicroUnity portfolio for $300 million in its third quarter 2005 10-K. The other MicroUnity settlements remain confidential.
On March 20, 2013, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Two-Way Media LLC, a company based in Colorado, on patent claims asserted against several AT&T entities and its related regional carriers. The TWM patents concern audio and video streaming, and were asserted against AT&T’s U-verse television service (which employs Microsoft’s Mediaroom software). HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that AT&T infringed the claims in two patents under the doctrine of equivalents. The jury further found that AT&T had not proven the patent claims invalid, and awarded significant damages that represented the seventh largest verdict in Texas and 71st largest verdict nationally for 2013, according to VerdictSearch. It also ranked first in Texas for the largest Intellectual Property verdict of 2015, according to VerdictSearch. After adding a significant sum of pre-judgment interest, the court entered a Final Judgment in favor of Two-Way Media.
On March 19, 2015, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Final Judgment in favor of Two-Way Media. Leslie Payne of HPC argued for Two-Way Media before the Federal Circuit in December 2014. Click Here To See The Federal Circuit Opinion. A settlement was announced in 2015, after the Federal Circuit affirmance.
Prior to the lawsuit against AT&T, HPC also represented Two-Way Media in a case against America Online. The AOL settled during trial, after a favorable Markman ruling. That settlement is confidential.
On June 18, 2015, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Dataquill Limited on patent claims asserted against ZTE USA (the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. at the time). (Other cases against Apple and Huawei were resolved before trial.) The Dataquill patents concern smartphone technology, which were asserted against ZTE’s Android smartphones. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that all asserted claims in three patents were valid and infringed, and awarded significant damages that represented the twelfth largest verdict in Texas for 2015 and the fifty-ninth largest nationally, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the third largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2015, according to VerdictSearch. A settlement was announced in December of 2015.
On May 26, 2011, a jury returned a verdict in favor of Fractus, S.A, an antenna company based in Barcelona, Spain, on all trial claims asserted against Samsung. The claims were spread across four related patents in Fractus’ Multilevel Patent family, generally covering multiband antennas used in portable communication devices, such as cell phones. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that Samsung infringed the claims literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, as well as finding that Samsung’s infringement was willful. After finding that Samsung had not proven the patent claims invalid, the jury entered a verdict awarding significant damages that represented the tenth largest verdict in Texas and 69th largest verdict nationally for 2011, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the fifth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2011, according to VerdictSearch., according to VerdictSearch. After damages were significantly enhanced by the district court judge based on the willful infringement, the court entered a final judgment for a substantial sum. The district court judge also entered an ongoing royalty rate for future infringement in the amount of 60 cents per unit for each infringing phone or tablet sold by Samsung after the date of the jury verdict.
Samsung appealed the judgment to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where HPC took the lead on the appellate briefing, working closely with its co-counsel Susman Godfrey. After oral argument at the Federal Circuit, a settlement was announced in2014.
Prior to trial, the HPC Fractus legal team also assisted in licensing the Fractus patent portfolio to several other parties, resulting in significant licensing fees. Most of those parties, including LG Electronics, Blackberry, HTC, and Kyocera, were the subject of lawsuits brought by HPC and Susman Godfrey that settled before trial.
HPC represented the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (“CSIRO”) in patent litigation related to its groundbreaking research in the area of wireless local area networking technology. CSIRO is Australia’s national science agency with facilities across Australia. It holds U.S. Patent No. 5,487,069, entitled “Wireless LAN,” which describes technology used to allow devices to communicate over a wireless local area network (WLAN). Specifically, the ‘069 patent discloses a wireless LAN system that increases throughput while ensuring reliability by using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in conjunction with other sophisticated signal processing techniques such as Forward Error Correction and Interleaving. The claims cover fundamental aspects of the IEEE 802.11a, g and n standards, which are commonly referred to as Wi-Fi. The use of Wi-Fi in laptops, smartphones and other devices around the world has grown exponentially in recent years. The ‘069 patent is widely recognized as the seminal patent in the area of Wi-Fi technology, and the CSIRO inventors have been recognized as pioneers in their field. They have received many awards, including the 2012 European Inventor of the Year award, the 2017 IEEE Consumer Electronics Award, and were named as Members of the Order of Australia.
HPC first started its representation of CSIRO when the ‘069 patent was challenged in reexamination proceedings. HPC assisted in successfully navigating CSIRO through those patentability challenges. Subsequently, HPC was retained in a series of patent infringement lawsuits, brought against Broadcom, Atheros, Lenovo, T-Mobile, Sony Corporation, Verizon, Acer, and AT&T. Those parties settled shortly before trial on terms very favorable to CSIRO. That settlement was announced in 2013. In 2016, CSIRO reported that it had received well over $400 million in licenses for the ‘069 patent.
Subsequently, HPC represented CSIRO against RealTek, MediaTek, Texas Instruments. Those cases also settled before trial on favorable terms. Settlement was announced in 2015.
In addition, HPC represented CSIRO against Cisco. After discovery, Cisco stipulated to infringement and validity, and the case proceeded to trial solely on the issue of damages. HPC, along with its co-counsel at Kobre Kim, tried the issue of damages to the district court. The court awarded significant damages to CSIRO in its order. The case then went up on appeal at the Federal Circuit and the case was ultimately settled in May of 2017.
CSIRO Wins Legal Battle Over Wi-Fi Patent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
HPC represented PACT in its patent infringement lawsuit against Xilinx, the world’s largest manufacturer of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (“FPGAs”), and Avnet, the primary distributor of Xilinx’s FPGAs. PACT is a German company that pioneered the “coarse grained” technology used in modern FPGAs, including revolutionary bus interface systems and dynamically reconfigurable processing cells. PACT’s patent portfolio covers that technology, amongst others. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
In May 2012, a jury returned a verdict in favor of PACT. After only a few hours of deliberation, the jury found the patents valid and returned a verdict that Xilinx willfully infringed two of PACT’s patents. The jury awarded significant damages that represented the eighteenth largest verdict in Texas, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the fourth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2015, according to VerdictSearch.
In September 2013, the court entered a final judgment that significantly enhanced damages and awarded PACT attorneys’ fees, interest and costs.
A settlement was announced in 2012.
Rembrandt Wireless retained HPC and its co-counsel Ahmad, Zavitsanos and Anaipakos (AZA) to enforce US Patent Nos. 8,023,580 and 8,457,228 against Samsung. The ‘580 and ‘228 patents cover technology developed at Paradyne Corporation which allows modems that communicate using different modulation types to coexist in the same network. The ‘580 and ‘228 patents were asserted against Samsung devices that include Bluetooth Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) capabilities. The Samsung EDR devices use both a GFSK (Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying) modulation technique and a faster PSK (Phase Shift Keying) modulation technique that allows data rate transmissions 2 or 3 times as fast the original FSK modulation used in the original Bluetooth specifications.
Samsung sought to invalidate the Rembrandt patents through a series of 13 separate IPR filings before the US Patent & Trademark Office. Certain claims of the ‘580 and ‘228 patents survived these repeated IPR attacks, and HPC and AZA proceeded to trial in the Eastern District of Texas on those claims. On February 13, 2015, the jury, after deliberating less than one hour, found that the asserted claims were valid and infringed by the accused Samsung products with the Bluetooth EDR functionality, and awarded Rembrandt significant damages that represented the 23rd largest verdict in Texas in 2015, according to VerdictSearch. It was also ranked as the sixth largest Intellectual Property verdict if Texas for 2015, according to VerdictSearch.
After trial, Samsung appealed the verdict on multiple grounds. HPC took the lead on the appellate briefing, working closely with its co-counsel at AZA. Michael Heim at HPC successfully argued the appeal on behalf of Rembrandt, resulting in an affirmance on all liability issues and on the damages methodology used to calculate damages. In addition to these affirmances, the Federal Circuit remanded for further consideration of a marking issue.
In 2007, a jury returned a verdict in favor of UniRAM Technology on trade secret misappropriation claims against Taiwan Semiconductor. HPC tried the case with its co-counsel at Susman Godfrey.
The jury found that UniRAM proved that its technology constituted protectable trade secrets. The jury further found that Taiwan Semiconductor misappropriated those trade secrets, and awarded significant damages.
Shortly after the jury verdict of trade secret misappropriation, HPC won a successful bench trial on several defenses raised by the defendant. A settlement was announced in 2008.
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