Touch-screen lawsuits hit Apple, HTC, Dell, Toshiba, others

[Metropolitanjury]

Now that the Patent Reform Act (S. 1145) has been pulled from the Senate floor schedule, it looks like business as usual for patent litigants, as a holder of touch screen patents has launched a carpet-bombing assault.

Re-tooling a patent infringement suit aimed at Dell from 2007, Typhoon Touch Technology and co-plaintiff Nova Mobility Systems have added Apple, Fujitsu, Toshiba America, Lenovo U.S., Panasonic Corp. of North America, HTC America Inc., Palm Inc., Samsung Electronics America, Nokia Inc, and LG Electronics USA to its list of defendants.

In its original complaint, Typhoon alleged that Dell and Motion Computing Inc. were "using and profiting from" the company's patented technologies. Typhoon holds two patents on fundamental elements of touchscreen technologies, (#5,379,057, and #5,675,362 issued in 1995 and 1997. Both patents share the title "Portable Computer with Touch Screen and Computer System employing Same," and have practically identical abstracts.

According to today's statement from Typhoon, only Motion Computing Inc. settled with the company, along with Electrovaya Inc. for its Scribbler tablet PCs.

The original suit said, "As further set forth in our Complaint, the alleged infringement by both Dell and Motion Computing absolutely impedes on our offering and has prevented us from obtaining our due royalties. We believe that their infringement was willful and therefore entitles us to treble damages."

Both the definition of "willful infringement" and situations potentially resulting in the dreaded treble damages (damages multiplied three times as punishment for willful misconduct) were major topics of the Patent Reform Act. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Emily Berger and Richard Esguerra attribute vagueness in these areas to be a major factor for "chilling innovation." When a company could be hit with a willful infringement ruling for simply knowing a patent exists, many companies would simply license any patent that could be troublesome rather than risk suit.

A House version of the Patent Reform Act was passed last September, and was then placed on the Senate Judiciary Committee calendar last January. There is no telling how long the bill's hiatus could last, though a public hearing on the debate did take place three weeks ago.

Typhoon's complaint was filed in the US District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division.

By Ms.Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury.