In Re Koninklijke Philips Patent Litigation
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:18-cv-01885
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 9
In re Philips Patent Litigation: Judge Gilliam granted Philips and Microsoft’s motion and dismissed their claims against each other under their stipulation.
Koninklijke Philips N.V., U.S. Philips Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, and Microsoft Mobile Inc.; the dismissal resolved only the claims between Philips and Microsoft and did not address the pending claims involving HTC, ASUS, or YiFang.
What happened
In re Koninklijke Philips Patent Litigation involved patent claims between Koninklijke Philips N.V. and U.S. Philips Corporation, together called Philips, and Microsoft Corporation and Microsoft Mobile Inc., together called Microsoft. The parties reached a confidential settlement resolving their claims against each other.
Philips and Microsoft jointly asked the court to approve their stipulated dismissal. Their stipulation dismissed all claims Philips asserted against Microsoft and all claims Microsoft asserted against Philips with prejudice, meaning those claims could not be brought again. Each side agreed to pay its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees. The dismissal did not address Philips’s pending claims against HTC, ASUS, or YiFang.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted the motion in its entirety and entered the stipulation as the court’s order. The court dismissed all claims between Philips and Microsoft under the stipulation’s terms.
The detailed version
- In Re Koninklijke Philips Patent Litigation · No. 4:18-cv-01885
- Haywood Gilliam
- Jan. 31, 2020
Background
Philips—Koninklijke Philips N.V. and U.S. Philips Corporation—had asserted patent-infringement claims involving certain computing devices. Microsoft Corporation and Microsoft Mobile Inc. had intervened in related actions as the supplier of an operating system used in some accused products. Microsoft asserted counterclaims seeking declarations of non-infringement, while Philips asserted direct and indirect infringement claims against Microsoft. The actions were transferred from the District of Delaware to the Northern District of California and consolidated.
The remaining parties included HTC Corp. and HTC America, Inc.; ASUS Computer International and ASUSTeK Computer, Inc.; and YiFang USA Inc. d/b/a E-Fun, Inc. Philips and Microsoft’s motion did not ask the court to act on Philips’s claims against those parties. HTC and ASUS stated that they did not oppose the motion, and YiFang had not objected as of the filing.
Motion and Stipulation
Philips and Microsoft jointly moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2) for voluntary dismissal of all claims between them. Their stipulation provided that all claims Philips asserted against Microsoft and all claims Microsoft asserted against Philips would be dismissed with prejudice. It also provided that each party would bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees.
The court explained that Rule 41(a)(2) permits dismissal by court order after an opposing party has served an answer or motion for summary judgment. It also stated that a plaintiff may use the rule to dismiss fewer than all parties and that dismissal generally should be allowed unless a defendant would suffer legal prejudice. The court found no such prejudice because the other defendants did not oppose the motion and the motion did not affect their pending claims.
Ruling
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted the motion in its entirety. The court entered the Stipulation of Dismissal as its order and dismissed all claims asserted by Philips against Microsoft and by Microsoft against Philips pursuant to the stipulation. The order did not decide the underlying patent-infringement or non-infringement questions and did not dispose of the claims involving HTC, ASUS, or YiFang.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.