Monday, February 3, 2014

CAFC Declares Realtime’s Data Compression Technology Patent Claims as Invalid

Case Filed: Dec 06, 2012

Case Closed: Jan 27, 2014

Origin Cases: 6:10-cv-00426, 1:11-cv-06696 and 1:11-cv-06704

Plaintiff: Realtime Data

Defendants: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, NASDAQ OMX Group, Thomson Reuters, Interactive Data and Others

Case Summary:
Realtime initially sued a variety of financial industry companies including Morgan Stanley in the Eastern District of Texas, categorized as stock exchanges, banks, and market data providers, alleging that the defendants infringed its patents by utilizing data compression products and/or systems.

Realtime brought three suits, each against defendants in a similar line of business, alleging infringement of several patents by utilizing systems incorporating FAST.  The suits were transferred to New York from Texas. The patents involved in the suit were:
  •     US7777651 entitled ‘System and Method for Data Feed Acceleration and Encryption’, issued on Aug 17, 2010 and expiring[*] by Oct 03, 2021.
  •   US6624761 entitled ‘Content independent data compression method and system’ issued on Sep 23, 2003 and expiring* by Dec 11, 2018
  •   US7161506 entitled ‘Systems and methods for data compression such as content dependent data compression’ issued on Jan 09, 2007 and expiring* by Dec 11, 2018
  •   US7400274 and US7417568 both entitled ‘System and method for data feed acceleration and encryption’ issued on Jul and Aug 2008 and expiring* by Oct 03, 2021
  •     US7714747 entitled ‘Data compression systems and methods’ issued on May 11, 2010 and expiring* by Dec 11, 2018

All of these patents are currently assigned[†] to Realtime (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database). The patents relate to data compression technology, which Realtime alleged defendants as infringing. In its prayer for relief, plaintiff sought Court to enter judgment in favor.

The defendants moved for summary judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of several claims of the ’651 and ’747 patents. Upon consideration, Court in Nov 2012, entered final judgment against Realtime favoring defendants including Morgan Stanley and dismissed the case without prejudice.

After multiple decisions from District Courts, Realtime appealed to federal circuit against summary judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of patents. The three patents at issue were: ‘568, '747 and '651 patents. The patents disclose a process that uses specialized encoders to compress data based on the content of the data.

Determining the case details, Federal Court concluded that the District Court did not err in granting summary judgment of non-infringement or invalidity of the appealed claims.

See 2013-1101 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.





[*] 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.

[†] 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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