TODAY's ITC DECISION--From what was posted on the public site today, we can conclude the following:
1. The ITC chose to review the ALJ's claim construction on the term "access signal" and the term "synchronize."
2. The ITC chose to review the validity determinations.
3. After the review, the ITC ruled as follows:
a. It modified the claim construction of "access signal. But after such modification, it still found the patent claim as construed not to be infringed.
b. It took no claims construction posiition on the term "synchronize."
c. It took no position on the validity issue.
The puzzling question is what does it mean to take no position and how does that impact IDCC.
The way I look at it is that the ALJ basically writes the first draft of a ruling for the Commission, covering all of the issues, and if they review it, they can change it as they see fit. Therefore, the ALJ ruled on validity and even whether a ban should issue if the Commission were to disagree with him and find infringement. When they say the Commission "takes no position" on an issue, it basically means that the issue is no longer necessary to their ruling. Once you find that the patents are not infringed, it really doesn't matter whether the patents are valid or not as far as the investigation goes. Think of it like a car accident case where I claim Revlis hit my car because he went through a red light. Let's say Revlis' defense was first, that he didn't hit me, someone else did, but that if he did, I was the cause because I was speeding. Let's say a jury found that Revlis did not hit me. The case would be over at that point and the jury would not even consider the issue of whether I was speeding, because it no longer mattered once the jury found that Revlis didn't hit my car. Because the ALJ first rules on all issues for the full Commission, he had to rule on the patent validity, in case the Commission disagreed with his claims construction and found infringement.
Remember that the findings of the ITC do not have any effect as to other parties or in the federal district court infringement actions. Therefore, the validity determination by the ALJ would not have applied to any other party in any type of case. By taking no position on validity, I think the full commission means it is not relevant to its investigation because it found that those patents were not infringed. It did not say that the ALJ was wrong. Therefore, we still have the ALJ's analysis. He is the only expert to date who has reviewed the patents and found them to be valid. The only result of the Commission's ruling on taking no position on validity is that if IDCC proceeds against Nokia in the future at the ITC on the same patents, it will have to retry the validity issue.
Please remember this is IMHO based on what was posted at the ITC site.
