KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.-Arguments will begin Thursday in the appeal by InterDigital Communications Corp. of its 1995 patent infringement case against Motorola Inc.
InterDigital’s patent protection arm, InterDigital Technology Corp., sued Illinois-based Motorola in 1993 regarding patents for Time Division Multiple Access technology.
The case went to trial in a Delaware federal court in March of 1995 and the jury came back in favor of Motorola. InterDigital said it was stunned by the decision and believed the jury didn’t understand the technical details in the case. InterDigital filed an appeal.
InterDigital believes recent events will give the case new strength. In November, a federal patent court in Germany upheld InterDigital’s TDMA patents in a dispute involving Standard Elektrik Lorenz, Siemens Aktiengesellschaft and Philips Patentverwaltung GmbH.
The patent at issue was the foreign counterpart to the U.S. patent the Delaware lay jury did not find valid in InterDigital’s lawsuit against Motorola.
The German decision was made by a panel of judges with technical expertise, which InterDigital said supports its claims that the U.S. jury didn’t understand the complex technical issues involved in the case.
The appeal will take place on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, as a part of a program by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to take cases into U.S. law schools. A three-judge panel will hear the appeal, InterDigital said.
