Sunday, May 11, 2014

BT, Relay IP Settle Suit over Router Patent

Case Filed: May 05, 2013

Case Closed: May 06, 2014

Court: Delaware District Court

Judge: Gregory M. Sleet

Case Summary:
Virginia-based company Relay IP filed an IP case against BT Group PLC accusing the UK-based company of offering routers, Ethernet switches, services and other products that infringe a patent. The patent involved in the suit was US5331637 entitled ‘Multicast routing using core based trees’ issued on Sep 19, 1994 and expired[i] on Jul 30, 2013. The patent relates to transmitting information organized into packets between nodes of a communications network.

The patent was last assigned[ii] to Mosaid Technologies (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database.) According to the complaint, Relay IP is the sole and exclusive owner of the ’637 patent.

Defendants infringed by using the method claimed in distributing data and/or data feeds via distribution networks, including BT Radianz Services, which practice the Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode standard (PIM-SM) for multicast routing. Defendants’ act of practicing the PIM-SM standard constitutes infringement for which they are directly liable, said the complaint. Relay IP sought adequate compensation of no less than a reasonable royalty.

The parties settled the dispute among themselves and thereafter, joint motion to dismiss the case was filed by Relay IP. The joint motion requested relief of claims and counterclaims asserted in this case. Court granted the motion, ordering dismissal of claims with prejudice and counterclaims without prejudice, with all attorneys’ fees, costs of court and expenses incurred by the same party.

Relay IP has filed nearly 25 lawsuits alleging infringement of the same patent.

See 1:13-cv-00771 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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