Court Won't Review Qualcomm Patent Win

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which specialized in patent cases, has declined a full-court review of a July three-judge panel decision that Qualcomm's cell phone/smart phone technology did not infringe on ParkerVision patents.

In July, CAFC upheld a 2014 federal judge's decision overturning a verdict awarding ParkerVision $173 million.

"We believe our petition brief clearly conveyed the simple fact that Qualcomm's 25% duty cycle [energy sampling] products would be inoperable if they worked in the way Qualcomm represented," said ParkerVision's chairman Jeffrey Parker in a statement, conceding the appeal had been a long shot.

"Although rehearing petitions are not frequently granted, we were hopeful that the technical misunderstandings in this case would provide sufficient basis for the panel to revisit its decision. Unfortunately, while that was not the case, as the CAFC denied our petition, Qualcomm's representations will follow them into other court actions."

ParkerVision has a separate patent infringement suit against Qualcomm, HTC, and Samsung in a Florida district court.

Elsewhere on the patent suit front, Congress is trying to come up with legislation that will curb so-called patent trolls without adversely affecting the ability of legitimate patent abuse claims to be heard.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.