Strategy in TECH...
Masimo Corporation (NASDAQ: MASI) scored a big win Thursday in its ongoing battles with Apple, Inc. when the United States International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) sided largely with Masimo and issued a Limited Exclusion Order and a Cease and Desist Order against certain Apple Watch models that infringe on select Masimo patents. This exclusion order bans the import of those models that incorporate Masimo’s patented light-based pulse oximetry technology in violation of U.S. trade laws.
MQA Limited has notified Companies House, the U.K. government agency that is roughly equivalent to our Securities and Exchange Commission, that it has changed its name. After nine years as MQA Limited, the company will now be known as Wave Realisations Limited.
After receiving an extension from the court giving them more time to respond, AVA, Inc. and Josh.ai, Inc. formally filed their responses to the Snap One, LLC lawsuit filed against them this past summer. With these filings, we have completed the end of the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a long dance marathon of patent and trade secret litigation.
In a shocking twist to a long-running patent battle, U.S. District Court Judge William H Alsup declared Sonos’ ‘966 and ‘885 patents at trial are unenforceable and invalid effectively countermanding a jury decision on behalf of Sonos and a royalty award of $32.5 million. Furthermore, the judge’s order suggests that Sonos abused the patent system by attempting to use it to “punish an innovator” and to “enrich a[n] [innovation] pretender.”
On Monday, Snap One revealed that it had filed a lawsuit against two other well-known, if smaller, brands, alleging patent infringement and a range of illicit and unethical business practices that it claims violated existing contractual agreements. The defendants in this matter are Josh.ai and AVA.
The allegations, if true, are really quite surprising.
It was eight years ago – all the way back to January 2015 – when I first reported on what looked to be a pretty ugly legal action beginning between Monster, LLC and Beats Electronics, LLC. While the lawsuit filed by Monster took place in January 2015, the actions that led them to that point actually began much earlier than that, all the way back to 2011. And the relationship between the two significant CE brands actually began even further back to 2009, when the two came together to create Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, the wildly popular consumer headphone brand.
But when the relationship ended…it ended badly…
The Minnesota District Court for the Fourth Judicial District in the County of Hennepin held a hearing on Tuesday to determine the final disposition of the insolvent Audio Research Corporation which is operating under Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC) – a form of receivership. The assignee in this case, Patrick Finn of Lighthouse Management Group had executed an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA) with Acora Acoustics and was seeking an order from the judge to approve the APA and the transfer of the assets free and clear of any and all liens to Acora Acoustics.
A former high-level Samsung Electronics executive was indicted on Monday for industrial espionage as it is alleged that he stole trade secrets in the form of blueprints and designs for an advanced Samsung chipmaking factory in order to create an identical one in China. South Korean prosecutors say the executive’s actions jeopardized national economic security, according to a report by the Reuters News Agency.
A jury has come to a unanimous verdict in the matter of Sonos, Inc. vs. Google, LLC, a patent infringement lawsuit initially filed on September 22, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for California Northern District in San Francisco. In the case of one of the two patents under consideration – the ‘885 patent – the jury sided with Sonos, finding that Google products did infringe upon the Sonos patent and awarded them a judgment of $32.5 million.
Earlier this month the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle issued a preliminary order approving a settlement in the matter of Stephen J. Tuttle, et al. v. Audiophile Music Direct, et al (including Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs). The settlement puts to rest all claims that have risen over the issue of Mobile Fidelity’s marketing of premium vinyl recordings as all-analog when in fact, in many instances the production used Direct Stream Digital as part of the manufacturing process.
