On March 28, the court ruled that Rockwell and ArvinMeritor do not infringe on Solaia's patent '318. In a companion decision, Solaia's claim against Rockwell and ArvinMeritor were summarily dismissed.

See my blog at http://www.livejournal.com/~waltboyes for details, and read the whole story in the April CONTROL magazine (also available at www.controlglobal.com).

This is a very large victory against patent trolls who use dubious patents to extract money from end users and vendors.

Too bad for all the end user companies, like Lilly and Smurfit and others, who settled instead of going to court, and too bad for GE Fanuc, who only last month announced they'd bought a license. Maybe they can put a stop payment on the check.

Walt Boyes
Editor in Chief
CONTROL magazine
[email protected]
www.controlglobal.com

 

You can console yourself with the fact that they happily
perpetrate their own farces with their own dubious patents.

Regards

cww

 

Not sure you have a total case here to say that GE should stop payment on checks based on one judge's opinion... I am not sure what Rockwell wins here.

 

Well, as I read the judgement, which you can see in its entirety at http://www.controlglobal.com, the judge rendered a summary judgement of non-infringement in favor of Rockwell and ArvinMeritor. That is, Solaia's patent may have validity, but it doesn't apply to the Rockwell products Solaia was using to extort (excuse me, gain royalty and license payments) from all the people it has sued, including GE.

As far as I can see, the '318 patent has effectively been ruled invalid, unless you happen to have an obsolete Square D PLC and you are taking data from each register and putting it into specifically assigned cells in a very
old copy of Lotus 1-2-3.

If ArvinMeritor and Rockwell themselves did not infringe, it will be very hard for Solaia to claim that anybody else infringed.

Of course, Solaia could appeal, but I really doubt they do. They aren't likely to get any more license payments and now all they'll be doing is dipping into profit.

Walt Boyes
Editor in Chief
CONTROL magazine
DigitalField Insider
SecureSystems Insider
ControlGlobal Ezine
www.controlglobal.com
blogging at www.livejournal.com/~waltboyes and at Soundoff on
ControlGlobal.com