Case Filed: Nov 13, 2012
Case Closed: Oct 07, 2013
Court: Texas Eastern District
Court
Judge: Rodney Gilstrap
Case Summary:
Rotatable Technologies filed a
complaint against HTC and other defendants for patent infringement over the use
of smartphone display technology. The patent in question was US6326978 entitled
‘Display method for selectively rotating windows on a computer display’ issued
to Steven John Robbins on Dec 04, 2001 and expiring[i]
by Apr 20, 2019. The ‘978 patent is currently assigned[ii]
to Rotatable Technologies (source: MaxVal’s Assignment
Database).
The patent generally relates to
the field of graphical user interfaces and pertains more particularly to a
display method for selectively rotating windows on a computer display. The rotation may be freely chosen or limited
to selected angles of rotation such as 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees, as pointed
in the ‘978 abstract.
The other defendants named in
suit were: Coby Electronics, LG, Lenovo, Pandigital, ViewSonic and Vizio. The
complaint in general states defendants “directly or through intermediaries,
made, had made, used, imported, provided, supplied, distributed, sold, and/or
offered for sale products and/or systems that infringed one or more claims of
the ’978 patent”. The accused products named in the suit were HTC One X, Coby
MID9742, LG Thrill P925, IdeaPad A2109, Pandigital Novel, ViewPad 7 and
VTAB1008.
The suit asked the Court for
judgment that the patent has been infringed, a permanent injunction preventing
infringement, damages, interest on damages and legal fees.
In Dec 2012, voluntary dismissal
of Pandigital was filed by Rotatable and Court granted dismissing all claims
without prejudice. In Apr 2013, Coby was dismissed from the case as a result of
stipulation filed by plaintiff. Court ordered
granting dismissal of Vizio, LG and Lenovo in June. ViewSonic was
terminated from the case in July.
In Oct 13, the parties (HTC and Rotatable)
filed a stipulation of dismissal and upon consideration the Court granted
Rotatable’s claims against HTC to be dismissed with prejudice and counterclaims
against Rotatable to be dismissed without prejudice and each party will bear
their own attorney fees and costs incurred.
Rotatable has also filed similar
cases against Apple, Acer, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung asserting the same
patent.
See 2:12-cv-00718 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.
[ii]
MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where
subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target
applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.
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