unenforceable

On January 12, 2011, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against a group of its competitors. The suit claims that Allstate, Liberty Mutual and Safeco have all infringed on Progressive’s U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,124,088 (hereafter ‘088) and 6,064,970. The patents in question describe and protect an online insurance policy system and vehicle monitoring system. Two weeks after the lawsuit was filed using patent ‘088, a continuation of this patent 7,877,269 (US ‘269) was granted to Progressive, containing largely similar claims.

On March 18, 2011, Imperium (IP) Holdings filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas accusing seven companies of infringing five of its patents. Imperium claims that LG, Kyocera, Nokia, Motorola Mobility, Apple, Sony and RIM have all committed infringement by manufacturing, selling or importing cell phones. The asserted patents all relate to image sensors and, in particular, photodiodes. Each of the five patents came to ESS Technology, Inc. as part of its 2003 acquisition of Pictos Technologies, Inc. from Conexant Systems, Inc.

On February 25, 2011, Motorola Mobility and its subsidiary General Instrument filed a patent infringement lawsuit against TiVo Inc. Motorola is alleging TiVo’s digital video recorders (DVRs) infringe three of its patents. The asserted patents were originally assigned to Imedia Corporation, whose assets were acquired by General Instrument, which was later acquired by Motorola.

On January 24, 2011, Sharp filed two complaints claiming infringement of seven of its LCD-related patents. A lawsuit was filed in Delaware against AU Optronics Corp. and a complaint was filed with the ITC naming AU Optronics, BenQ Corp., Haier Group, LG Electronics, SANYO Electric Co., TCL Corp. and VIZIO, Inc. Sharp has previously tested the litigation waters with one of these seven properties: U.S. Pat. No. 7,057,689 (hereafter ‘689). In August 2007, Sharp filed an infringement claim in the Eastern District of Texas against Samsung.

In May of 2010, Rolls-Royce fired the first salvo across the bow of Pratt & Whitney in what has become a back-and-forth contest between the two aerospace engineering giants. In the initial patent infringement suit, Rolls-Royce alleged that the design of Pratt & Whitney’s fan blades used in its GP7200 engine infringed on U.S. Patent No. 6,071,077, held by Rolls-Royce. In September, Pratt & Whitney responded not only with a denial of the allegations of infringement, but also with a countersuit stating that the ‘077 patent is invalid and unenforceable.