Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit delivered a solid dose of clarity today. VHC's appeal of the PTAB invalidation of certain critical patent elements has been reversed and sent back to the PTAB for further review.
If you read through today's opinion on the Mangrove IPRs - the '135 and the '151 patents - you will see for certain those patents will live on. IPHawk has shared his expertise pointing out that the PTAB grossly abused their BRI interpretation by ignoring clear an unambiguous disclaimers. Once the PTAB applies the CAFC guidance on remand, their rejections will fail.
This means Apple without question will become a court-determined willful infringer of another's patents.
Apple will soon lose their money arguments. How do we know? Again, that was signaled by the Rule 36. However, it was reinforced in subsequent CAFC opinions such as Sprint v Time Warner.
Keep in mind, Apple did NOT dispute the $1.21 at all...Bill Lee made that statement at the oral argument. Apple instead argued the agreements that VHC used to establish the $1.21 were flawed. Per the previous paragraph, subsequent opinions let us know that Apple loses that argument.
The only thing Apple had left to cling onto was the potential patent invalidation. As of today, we know for certain that's not happening.
Therefore, do we see Apple do something they have never done before? To my knowledge, Apple has never been mandated an infringing party of another's patents and even worse, willfully doing so. The wheels must be spinning faster at 1 Infinite Loop...
