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Apple officially began filing an IPR for reexamination of patents filed by Ericsson in the ITC and district courts

Apple officially began filing an IPR for reexamination of patents filed by Ericsson in the ITC and district courts

This is a formal escalation of the dispute between the two sides after Ericsson filed a FRAND lawsuit against Apple in federal court in Texas on October 4 last year.

Beginning January 19, Apple also hit back, filing a 337 investigation against Ericsson in the ITC.

On the same day, Apple also filed a reexamination IPR for Ericsson's patent on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. From January 19 to March 1, a total of 28 patents were filed against Ericsson IPRs, including 25 patents in the previous Ericsson and Samsung litigation.

The 12 patents Ericsson used to sue Apple in January were not the ones it had previously fought against Samsung. In other words, Apple has been challenging the validity of Ericsson patents that are not other than those that Ericsson sued. We suspect that these patents are also part of the 100 patents listed in Ericsson's licensing negotiations with Apple.

Apple did not formally file a reexamination IPR (IPR2022-00715) for 1 of the 12 patents until April 1, 2022,454.

As a result, it also officially opened the prelude to Apple's 12 lawsuits against Ericsson for patent invalidation.

Apple officially began filing an IPR for reexamination of patents filed by Ericsson in the ITC and district courts

Production: Corporate Patent Watch

This 454 patent is also a 337 case (No. 337). 337-TA-3597) and the District Court (6:22-cv-00061), not a standard-essential patent, relates to wide area network and LAN roaming technology, and the original owner is Toshiba American Research Institute, which was transferred to Ericsson on February 17, 2021. In the same No. In the case of 337-TA-3597, the remaining two non-SEP patents were US8,472,999 and US10,880,794.

According to Apple's description of the Findiv rules in the IPR, an ITC 337 hearing on this patent will be held on November 10, 2022, and a preliminary ruling will be made by February 24, 2023.

This time is similar to the hearing time of the Munich court in Germany, according to the timing of FOSSPATENT's recent first hearing on the five patents of the two parties in Munich, except for one in September, four were in November. It also shows that German courts seem to be a little more efficient than in the United States. Therefore, at the end of this year, it will be a small climax for the beginning of the dispute between the two sides.

From Apple's defendant in January to the first IPR filed against a patent on April 1, Apple has been preparing for about 70 days. The U.S. law firm that represented Apple in proposing the IPR was Erise IP, in which Adam Seitz, the lawyer in charge of the case, had experience working at the ITC.

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