Today, Apple, Google, and LG Electronics secured a win after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case over an expired patent. Here are the details.
A bit of background
In 2021, Gesture Technology Partners sued Apple, Google, and LG Electronics, alleging that the companies infringed U.S. Patent No. 7,933,431, titled “Camera Based Sensing in Handheld, Mobile, Gaming, or Other Devices.”
From the lawsuit:
“The invention relates to simple input devices for computers, particularly, but not necessarily, intended for use with 3-D graphically intensive activities, and operating by optically sensing a human input to a display screen or other object and/or the sensing of human positions or orientations. (…) The invention uses single or multiple TV cameras whose output is analyzed and used as input to a computer, such as a home PC, to typically provide data concerning the location of parts of, or objects held by, a person or persons.”
Interestingly, the patent expired in 2020, which was one year before Gesture Technology Partners filed the three separate lawsuits, one against each company. In the lawsuit, they sought damages for the alleged infringement that occurred while the patent was still active.
However, during the legal back-and-forth, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated 31 of the patent’s 33 claims, and later the entire patent was declared invalid by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Given that outcome, Gesture Technology Partners tried to take the case up to the US Supreme Court, which brings us to today.
What happened today
As spotted by Reuters, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Gesture Technology Partners’ appeal, after Apple, Google, LG, and the US Patent and Trademark Office filed separate briefs urging the Court to let the Federal Circuit’s decision stand.
In those briefs, the companies and the USPTO argued that even expired patents can still be reviewed by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board because questions of patent validity continue to implicate public rights.
Gesture, on the other hand, had argued that expired patents fell outside the PTAB’s authority and must be challenged exclusively in federal court. However, the Supreme Court declined to take up the dispute, leaving the lower court’s ruling in place.
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