HTC Awarded $4m Fees in ‘False’ Patent Dispute

Smart phone maker HTC has been awarded more than $4 million in attorneys’ fees after two US courts found that licensing company Intellect Wireless had submitted false documents to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).


The dispute centred on a lawsuit filed by Intellect Wireless at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2009. Intellect Wireless claimed that HTC infringed two patents covering the wireless transmission of caller identification information. In 2012, the district court ruled against Intellect Wireless, stating that the “asserted patents are unenforceable due to inequitable conduct”. Intellect Wireless appealed against the ruling but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the judgment in October 2013.


Both courts found that Daniel Henderson, the assignee of the patents and chief executive of Intellect Wireless, had submitted false statements in his patent applications to the USPTO in an attempt to overcome prior art that may have blocked the registration.


A month after the federal circuit’s judgment, HTC requested a fee award under sections 285 and 1927 of the US code.


Section 285 enables judges to award reasonable attorney’s fees to prevailing parties in “exceptional cases”, and section 1927 allows the awarding of fees in cases where excessive costs may have occurred due to a party’s “unreasonable” conduct.


In January this year, Judge William Hart at the Illinois district court found the licensing company liable for HTC’s legal costs under both sections. In his assessment of the damages, issued on Tuesday, July 21, Hart ruled that HTC was due $4,090,030.53.