Case Updates

On May 21, 2019, District Judge Lucy H. Koh of the Northern District of California ruled that Qualcomm, Inc.’s standard essential patent licensing practices were anticompetitive.[1] FTC v. Qualcomm, No. 5:17-cv-002200, 2019 U.S. Dist. WL 2206013 (N.D. Cal. May 21, 2019). Judge Koh found that Qualcomm possessed monopoly power in the markets for CDMA and premium-LTE modem chips. Qualcomm in turn used this monopoly power to (a) force SEP licensees into anticompetitive licensing agreements, (b) refuse to license its SEPs to rival modem chip manufacturers, (c) extract supra-competitive royalties from customers, (d) push competitors out of the market, and (e) secure exclusive deals. This anticompetitive behavior harmed original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) and Qualcomm’s rivals in the CDMA and premium-LTE modem chip markets. Indeed, Qualcomm had required OEMs to sign a patent license agreement before they could purchase their model chips (i.e., the no license/no chip policy), a practice which the court deemed anticompetitive. Read more

In July 2018, Plaintiffs Wi-LAN Inc., Wi-LAN USA, Inc., and Wi-LAN Labs, Inc., (collectively, “Wi-LAN”) brought a patent infringement action against Defendants LG Electronics, Inc., LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc., and LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc., (collectively, “LG”) alleging that LG’s wireless communications products that are compliant with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 4G LTE standard (3GPP LTE) directly infringed four of Wi-LAN’s patents. Wi-Lan Inc., et al. v. LG Elecs., Inc., et al., --- F. Supp. 3d ----, No. 18-cv-01577-H-BGS, 2019 WL 1586761, at *1 (S.D. Cal. Apr. 12, 2019). Wi-Lan was once a company that engaged in research and development of various wireless technologies but now primarily focuses on licensing patent portfolios owned by others. LG, in response, asserted various counterclaims relating to the unenforceability of Wi-LAN’s purported standard-essential patents and, particularly, claims for (1) monopolization and attempted monopolization in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §2; (2) unfair business practices under Section 17200 of the California Business and Profession Code, Cal. Bus. & Prof. § 17200; and (3) declaratory judgment of unenforceability of U.S. Patent No. 8,867,351 (“the ’351 patent”) under a theory of infectious unenforceability. Read more

On March 8, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of a class of current and former NCAA Division I basketball and FBS football players who brought a multidistrict class action antitrust suit against the NCAA and eleven of its member conferences challenging the NCAA’s rules capping the amount of compensation that student-athletes can receive in exchange for their athletic services. In re NCAA Grant-in-Aid Cap Antitrust Litig., 375 F. Supp. 3d 1058, 1062 (N.D. Cal. 2019) (the “Grant-in-Aid Litigation”). Read more

The Medical Board of California issued a subpoena demanding that Dr. Ron Kennedy produce the medical records of three minor patients for whom he had provided vaccination exemptions. When Dr. Kennedy refused to comply, the Board filed a petition in the superior court under Government Code section 11187 to compel compliance. The superior court granted the petition and ordered Dr. Kennedy to produce the records, then denied Dr. Kennedy’s request to stay that order pending appellate review. Dr. Kennedy appealed and filed a petition for a writ of supersedeas seeking a stay of the production order pending appeal. Read more

The following is a case update analyzing a recent case of interest, In re Harish Venkat Reddy and Deepika Basi Reddy, 589 B.R. 867 (E.D. Cal 2018). Read more

In Easley v. Collection Serv. of Nev., 910 F.3d 1286 (9th Cir. 2018), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Ninth Circuit”) expanded the holding in In re Schwartz-Tallard, 803 F. 3d 1095 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc), to mean that debtors are entitled to recover appellate attorneys’ fees when successfully challenging an initial award of fees and costs awarded to them under section 362(k) for a willful violation of the automatic stay, not only when defending such award. Read more

In Bank of New York Mellon v. Lane (In re Lane), 589 B.R. 399 (9th Cir. BAP 2018), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit (the "BAP") held that disallowance of a claim for lack of standing by the claimant did not also void the underlying lien under 11 U.S.C. section 506(d) because no argument had been made by the debtor that the lien or underlying obligation was substantively invalid. Read more

In Han v. Hallberg (May 21, 2019), the court of appeal addressed an issue that probably lurks in many buy-sell agreements, including those involving limited liability companies and corporations. Read more

The United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit held that in a case converted from chapter 13 to chapter 7, the relevant date for determining a debtor’s homestead exemption was fixed on the date of the chapter 13 filing. Klein v. Good (In re Good) BAP No. WW-18-1125-KuTaB, 2018 Bankr. LEXIS 3609 (9th Cir. BAP 2018). The BAP affirmed the bankruptcy court’s ruling denying the chapter 7 trustee’s objection to the Debtors’ homestead exemption as untimely, and found no abuse of discretion in its ruling that equitable estoppel was not applicable. Read more

The bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York held that certain liquidated damage clauses in an aircraft lease violate New York Commercial Code Article 2-A and, thus, are unenforceable as against public policy, not only against the lessee, but also as against the lessee’s guarantor. In In re Republic Airways Holdings Inc. 2019 WL 630336 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Feb. 14, 2019), the bankruptcy court granted summary judgment on the objection to the lessor’s claim on the grounds that the liquidated damage provisions were not reasonable in light of the anticipated harm from default measured at the time of the lease’s formation. Read more