Ninestar has failed to prove that Seiko Epson deliberately mislead the US Patent Office, claiming two Epson patents were unenforceable.
An Oregon federal judge has granted Seiko Epson’s cross-motion for partialsummary judgment on 15 November on a counterclaim by Ninestar, stating their failure to prove that Epson intentionally sought to deceive the US Patent and Trademark Office in order to be granted the patents at issue, as reported by Law360.
Ninestar’s claims that Epson’s US patents numbered 6,502,917 and 6,550,902 were unenforceable because Epson “withheld prior art during the patent application process” and “fraudulently procuring the patents in order to allegedly maintain a monopoly” were dismissed by US District Judge Anna Brown.
The order states “The court concludes no reasonable juror could find that Epson had ‘the specific intent to deceive’ the patent examiner regarding the prior art relating to the [patents at issue]”.
The claims are a development of an on-going suit from Seiko Epson against Ninestar launched in April 2006, in which Epson claimed that “NInestar and other rivals produced, imported and sold ink cartridges for printers that infringed patents covering Epson’s printer technology”, and Ninestar moved for summery counterclaims on 22 April 2011.
Judge Brown found the US Patent and Trademark Office had access to the prior art, possessing a translated version of the ‘917 and ‘902 applications from a filing with a German patent office.
Ninestar, along with two US subsidiaries, has previously had to pay $11.1 million (€ 8.2 million) in damages related to importing ink cartridges that allegedly infringed Epson’s patents.