Nokia fends off lawsuit targeting its network infrastructure: three patents not infringed

Context: Nokia has a patent licensing program where most deals are concluded without litigation, but sometimes enforcement is needed to overcome a negotiation impasse. For instance, HP settled with Nokia last week (October 30, 2024 ip fray article). It also happens that Nokia’s network infrastructure business faces patent assertions, either directly or in the form of lawsuits against customers (typically network operators).

What’s new: Yesterday, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas cleared Nokia of infringement allegations concerning three network technology patents asserted by a non-practicing entity named Correct Transmission that has also separately sued other companies, such as Microsoft. The accused products were some Nokia routers and switches.

Direct impact: Correct Transmission presumably disagrees with the jury and will try to get the verdict overruled or a retrial ordered by Judge Rodney Gilstrap. More likely, this case will go up to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Wider ramifications: Lawsuits like this show that Nokia knows not only the perspective of licensors and patentees but also those of licensees and defendants. Therefore, Nokia cannot take extremely unbalanced positions in policy debates.

The only thing that Correct Transmission technically achieved is that one patent claim was upheld despite Nokia claiming that it was invalid for lack of support in the written description. U.S. juries rarely invalidate patent claims.

The verdict came down yesterday, though most verdicts in Judge Rodney Gilstrap’ court come down on on Fridays. In this case, it’s particularly unusual that a verdict was rendered on Election day, a federal holiday.

These are the three patents-in-suit, none of which is standard-essential:

·U.S. Patent No. 7,127,523 (“spanning tree protocol traffic in a transparent LAN”)

·U.S. Patent No. 7,283,465 (“hierarchical virtual private LAN service protection scheme”)

·U.S. Patent No. 7,768,928 (“connectivity fault management (CFM) in networks with link aggregation group connections”)

The complaint was filed in 2022 as the case number (2:22-cv-343) also indicates.