Brokentrade, for your consideration. From someone without any legal experience who has greatly appreciated your insights over the past few years. Hoping that my lack of legal experience actually allows me to be helpful here. In the ref post you said the following, and I'm not sure if it was only in ref to the patents InterDigital dismissed back in 1999, or to the rulings by Judge Sanders last year. I'm thinking that you may be drawing an incorrect parallel with those two very different events. Let's break out of any assumed pre-context and just look objectively at the specific words before making any judgments of their meaning; you said (my bold);
"There is no way InterDigital "won" the claims that were withdrawn from consideration. At least if by winning we mean get paid for them. It is small consolation that they weren't also declared invalid."
See that word "withdrawn"? That is YOUR word and IMHO it relates only to the action back in 1999 when InterDigital actually did "withdraw from consideration" certain claims and patents, probably for the reason you suggested.
Now, let's look at the words in that June 3, 2002 announcement of results in the federal district court. Let's assume that these words were crafted by a very smart lawyer who wanted to obfuscate any interim victory until the final objective was achieved.
"As previously reported in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, each party has filed pre-trial motions with the Court under seal seeking to limit issues at trial and to dismiss the other party's case in whole or in part. The Judge has ruled on portions of the pre-trial motions of both parties, removing certain patent claims from further consideration with regard to the infringement issues in the District Court case, the effect of which is to narrow the issues remaining for trial. The Company believes these rulings, which remain under Court seal, do not materially affect the relief sought by InterDigital Technology Corporation. Court ordered mediation continues."
Looks like we are talking about rulings on psj's intended to limit the issues at trial(i.e., win or lose on PSJ before the trial), and that the court has ruled on some of those issues. BIG difference here is that THE JUDGE is deciding on PSJ motions instead of InterDigital or Ericsson withdrawing anything. Now, we have to ask ourselves how a Judge can "remove certain patent claims from further consideration" and "narrow the issues remaining for trial" without "materially affect(ing) the relief sought by InterDigital"?
One possible answer is that he ruled on those PSJ's that were in alignment with the Markman results, and we are done with those. Some were favorable to InterDigital, and some may not have been. The rest were left for argument at trial. There were certainly no trumpets hearlding those rulings for sure, but that would not be smart would it? However, if we look carefully it appears that things did change at that time, i.e., news of the litigation appeared in the Swedish press in the following weeks, and several InterDigital comments quoted in the press seemed more confident than we had heard before.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
