Boxtone and Xerox Hit with Patent Suit

Case Filed: Mar 12, 2014

Court: California Northern District Court

Judge: Laurel Beeler

Case Summary:

SoftVault Systems, Inc. (SVS), a Washington-based intellectual property company, filed a complaint against Boxtone and Xerox accusing them of patent infringement over their patented technology in the field of digital rights management (DRM) and device access control. The patents at issue are: US6249868 and US6594765 both entitled ‘Method and system for embedded, automated, component-level control of computer systems and other complex systems’, duly issued by United States Patent & Trademark Office on Jun 19, 2001 and Jul 15, 2003, respectively. The patents are scheduled to expire[i] by Mar 25 and Sep 29, 2018. The patents are owned and currently assigned to SoftVault. The patents are directed, in general, to the remote disablement of hardware and digital content.

The complaint alleged that Boxtone infringes the patents-in-suit by manufacturing products and systems which prevent unauthorized access through the ability to enable or disable the operation of a device’s components through an authorization process performed by an embedded agent in the component device and a server. The complaint cited Boxtone’s Mobile Device Management system as the infringing product and alleged that Xerox infringes the patents through use of the infringing product.

In its prayer for relief, SoftVault requested Court to find judgment in its favor with damages, costs and permanent enjoinment of the infringing products.

See 3:14-cv-01155 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.