Thursday, December 12, 2013

Cisco, Penovia Put Litigation to Rest

Case Filed: Sep 27, 2013

Case Closed: Dec 06, 2013

Court: Texas Eastern District Court

Judge: Rodney Gilstrap

Case Summary:
Patent holding company Penovia filed an infringement suit against Cisco accusing them of infringing the company’s patented technology for office machine monitoring device. The patent in question is US5822221 issued on Oct 13, 1998 and expiring[i] by Dec 04, 2016. The document stated that the ‘221 patent expired on or about October 13, 2010, because its owner, the inventor Frank S. Groenteman, was not able to pay the maintenance fee to USPTO and later Penovia LLC acquired the patent. Penovia is the current assignee[ii] of the ‘221 patent (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database).

The complaint alleged that Cisco infringed the patent, which covers a device that can wirelessly transmit messages to and receive communications from office machines including computers, printers and copiers. Defendant is alleged to have directly infringed at least claim 1 of the ‘221 patent by making, using, importing, selling and/or offering for sale office machine monitoring devices, including wireless routers and/or wireless gateways utilizing a device for monitoring certain machine statuses wirelessly, the complaint said. The accused products include Linksys WRT100 RangePlus Wireless Router products.

The parties announced to Court that they have settled the case among themselves, after which agreed motion for dismissal was filed by Penovia. Upon consideration, the Court granted the motion and ordered all claims asserted against Cisco be dismissed with prejudice, thereby closing the case. Each party will bear their own costs and expenses. Further details of the settlement were not disclosed.

See 2:13-cv-00774 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

* Expected expiration date using Patent Term Estimator, use our free tool or download our free Android app on Google Play Store. 



[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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