A U.S. magistrate judge has decided that two patent infringement suits against BlackBerry should go forward.
Patent holder PanOptis Patent Management LLC had filed two separate complaints against the company in January 2016, alleging infringement of eight wireless communications and mobile phone patents.
BlackBerry filed motions to dismiss both suits in May, arguing that the complaints filed by PanOptis were not detailed enough to survive its request to toss them.
Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne wrote that one of the suits should be allowed to proceed. In his recommendations Monday, he referred to the reasoning in that report in reaching the same conclusion about the second lawsuit.
In his February 10 report, Judge Payne wrote that “no court has appeared to require the level of detail demanded by BlackBerry,” and the company hadn’t provided the court with “a convincing argument to the contrary.”
Judge Payne wrote that BlackBerry didn’t cite a case in its filings, and the court found none either, where a “standard essential infringement claim” was dismissed for “inadequately alleging infringement based on compliance with an industry standard.”
“In fact, a party asserting a standard essential patent will often rely on compliance with the standard as the sole basis for infringement at trial,” the report reads.
“However unwise that practice might be, the point is that alleging infringement of a standard essential patent is different than alleging ordinary infringement because standard essential patent infringement rests on compliance with a universal industry standard.”
According to the complaints PanOptis filed against BlackBerry in January last year, the at-issue patents cover inventions “relating to wireless communications, mobile telephones and other devices for use in a mobile communications network.” BlackBerry, it alleged, has infringed the patents by importing and selling mobile phones and tablets that use the technology.
