Case Filed: Sep 16, 2011
Case Closed: May 23, 2014
Court: Minnesota District Court
Judge: Ann D. Montgomery
Case Summary:
Benton Harbor, Michigan-based Whirlpool,
manufacturer and marketer of home appliances filed a complaint against Swift
Green Filters Ltd. and WaterFilters.net LLC for violating the company’s patent
rights related to refrigerator water filter.
Patents-in-suit:
The patents at issue were: US7000894
and US7610932 both entitled ‘Fluidic cartridges and end pieces thereof,’ issued
on Feb 21, 2006 and Nov 03, 2009, respectively. The patents are scheduled to
expire[i]
by Apr 25, 2023 and Dec 01, 2025, respectively.
Whirlpool is the current assignee[ii]
of the patents (source: MaxVal’s Assignment
Database.) The patents relate to the field of fluidic cartridges and end
pieces that are capable of actuating one or more valves of an appliance.
As in complaint:
Swift and Waterfilters.net infringe
the ‘894 and ‘932 patents and/or induce or contribute to infringement(s) by its
manufacture, use, offer for sale, sale, and/or import of one or more products
that infringe the ‘894 and ‘932 patents, including SGF-W71 product.
Whirlpool sought court
order barring further infringement and sales of product that infringes the
patents, lost profit damages, a reasonable royalty and a finding that the
infringement was willful, which would triple the damages.
Confidential Settlement
Agreement:
Whirlpool, Swift and
WaterFilters.net have settled the case and reached an agreement following which
the parties filed a joint motion of dismissal. The court granted the motion and
ordered that all claims and counterclaims asserted in this suit between
Whirlpool, Swift Green and WaterFilters.net are dismissed with prejudice,
subject to the terms agreement entitled “Confidential Settlement Agreement.” Each
party will bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs incurred. Further terms of
the settlement were not disclosed.
See 0:11-cv-02686
for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our
Litigation Alerts.
Max-Insight enables you to access all of our patent tools such
as Patent Term Estimator, Patent Family Tree, Has This Patent Been Litigated,
etc. in one location. Max-Insight is available in 4 different
subscriptions: Free, Bronze, Silver and Gold with
varying usage levels. To learn more about Max-Insight, click here.
[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.
No comments:
Post a Comment