Intellectual Property law has been changing at a remarkable rate in the wake of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, the Alice decision, and also the Halo decision, among others. It’s a widely held belief that these decisions have made it harder for patent holders to assert their IP rights. Consequently when patent holders do sue for patent infringement, they have to be sure they have a strong case. In many technology cases, the source code represents “ground truth” about how an accused product functions. With his background in telecommunications and his strong software expertise, Nigel Jones has done considerable patent work, and has proven to be adept at explaining to juries the complexities of modern communication systems and the software that underpins them.
Representative Cases
Cell & Network Selection LLC v. AT&T et al.
Cell & Network Selection (CNS) filed patent infringement lawsuits against most of the giants of the LTE industry, alleging that the idle mode handover procedure used in LTE infringed upon US patent 6,195,551. Following an adverse Markman hearing, CNS turned to Nigel Jones to see if a case could still be made within the constraints imposed by the court’s claim construction.
After an extensive review of the relevant source code from Qualcomm, Mr. Jones submitted an 86-page report describing exactly how defendants were practicing idle mode handover. In particular, the report showed that despite defendants’ claim to the contrary, they were indeed performing a critical step in the alleged claims.
Shortly after depositions were completed, CNS entered into an agreement with RPX Corporation which effectively settled the litigation.
Cellular Communications Equipment, LLC v. Apple
CCE sued Apple for patent infringement in 2014, alleging that Apple was infringing various patents related to mobile telecommunications. The case went to trial in September 2016 in the Eastern District of Texas. Nigel Jones testified for CCE and was charged with explaining to the jury the underlying technology and also how Apple’s source code performed the key features at issue in the case. Ultimately Apple’s non-infringement defense centered on the proper way to interpret a mere two lines of code. The jury returned a running royalty verdict of $22.1m through March 2016 indicating that they agreed with Mr. Jones’s view of the code and disagreed with Apple’s position.
