Tuesday, December 10, 2013

HP and Others Settle Suit with NovelPoint over Location Services

Case Filed: Nov 12, 2012

Case Closed: Dec 05, 2013

Court: Texas Eastern District Court

Judge: Rodney Gilstrap

Case Summary:
NovelPoint Security filed a complaint accusing HP of infringing its US patent US6442485 entitled ‘Method and apparatus for an automatic vehicle location, collision notification, and synthetic voice’, which was legally issued on Aug 27, 2002 and expiring[i] by Jun 12, 2020. The patent is currently assigned[ii] to NovelPoint Security (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database). The patent relates to a controller with a memory, a Global Positioning System and means for wireless communication connectively disposed within a vehicle.

The Court documents said, defendant infringed the claims of patent-in-suit by making use of the products and/or methods encompassed by claims of the ‘485 patent and cites Veer 4G smartphone as an example of infringing product/method.

The case initially proceeded with HP and later defendants including Acer, Pantech Wireless, Lenovo, Dell, Huawei Device, Coolpad Technologies and Personal Communications Devices were consolidated to this case.

It seems that all the parties settled the case with NovelPoint and filed a joint motion for dismissal. Upon consideration, the Court ordered all claims be dismissed with prejudice. No information on the terms of settlement is available. Each party will bear their own costs and expenses.

So far, NovelPoint has filed nearly 46 cases asserting the same patent against companies such as Sony, Honda, BMW, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz USA, etc.

See 2:12-cv-00716 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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