Court Issues Judgment Favoring YouTube

Case Filed: Mar 11, 2011

Case Closed: Sep 13, 2013

Court: California Northern District Court

Judge: Howard R. Lloyd

Case Summary:

A patent infringement suit was filed by Tetsuya against YouTube in violation of the U.S. patent number 7254622 covering video streaming service. The patent is entitled Video-on-demand system, issued on Aug 07, 2007 and expires[i] by Dec 15, 2020.  The patent, in general relates to a video-on-demand system that provides movies, video and other pre-recorded programs to a user. In particular, it relates to a high speed, reliable video-on-demand system with storing, selecting, downloading and playing of pre-recorded video programs. Tetsuya is one of the named inventors of the patent.

The Court documents said that defendant infringed the claims of the ‘622 patent by using the methodology outlined in the patent and sought money damages and attorneys’ fees. It appears that YouTube have asked the Court to decide that they have not infringed the patent-in-suit and subsequently filed a summary judgment of non-infringement. The Court entered a judgment in favor of the defendant and against Tetsuya ruling that the streaming video services YouTube offers are substantively different from the invention claimed in Tetsuya’s patent.

Tetsuya’s also filed suit against Amazon asserting the same patent number which was closed in favour of Amazon.

See 5:11-cv-01208 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts. 

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[i] Expected expiration date. Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.