Los Angeles – GlaxoSmithKline LLC and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. illegally conspired to delay the entry to the market of a generic version of Glaxo’s epilepsy drug Lamictal in order to preserve the validity of Glaxo’s patent for the drug and allow Teva generic exclusivity, a union healthcare fund alleged in a new class action on Thursday.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 595 Health and Welfare Fund is seeking in its complaint in New Jersey federal court to represent a class of all those who purchased or paid for Lamictal-brand lamotrigine tablets from Glaxo or a generic version from Teva.

Glaxo has manufactured, marketed, and sold Lamictal tablets since 1994 for the treatment of medical conditions such as epilepsy, other seizure disorders, and bipolar disorder, as well as several off-label uses. Lamictal was a highly successful and profitable drug, but Glaxo’s patent for it expired in 2008.

In 2002 Teva filed abbreviated new drug applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval to market generic versions of Glaxo’s Lamictal tablets. Glaxo then sued Teva alleging willful infringement of the Lamictal patent.

On the final day of a bench trial in the patent case, the judge issued a ruling invalidating the independent claim of the Lamictal patent, and said a ruling on its other three dependent claims would be issued shortly.

“Faced with the likelihood that its first effort to delay entry of generic versions of Lamictal would fail, Glaxo sought another vehicle to create delay and preserve its lucrative monopoly for as long as possible,” the complaint says. “With those goals in mind, in February 2005, it entered into purported settlement negotiations with Teva.”

The two companies entered into an allegedly anticompetitive settlement that same month, according to the union fund. Glaxo offered Teva a range of financial inducements in exchange for Teva’s agreement to settle the patent litigation in a way that preserved the validity of the Lamictal patent, while delaying Teva’s launch of its generic version, the fund says.

Teva agreed to delay launching its generic version of Lamictal until as late as July 2008, the expiration date of the patent. The settlement basically ignored the fact that Teva had already prevailed in its efforts to invalidate the primary patent claim, the fund says.

In exchange for the delay, Teva received the right to sell a limited quantity of generic Lamictal tablets beginning in June 2005.

“Glaxo and Teva guaranteed themselves supra-competitive revenues for several months, which resulted in anti-competitive overcharges paid by indirect purchasers of Lamictal tablets such as plaintiff and its beneficiaries,” the complaint says.

In the absence of the agreements, Teva would have brought its generic version to the market three years earlier, either because it prevailed in the Patent Litigation or chose to launch its generics “at risk,” the fund says. Other generic manufacturers would also have entered the market earlier, causing lower prices for generic Lamictal once Teva’s 180-day exclusivity period would have expired, it says.

Los Angeles – Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. traded fire on Friday over whether Samsung’s allegations of misconduct on the jury foreman’s part in the trial of the pair’s epic tablet and smartphone patent infringement lawsuit merits overturning the jury’s $1 billion award and holding a new trial.

Earlier in October Samsung accused jury foreman Velvin Hogan of lying about his past involvement in litigation and past ties to Samsung’s law firm, saying he failed to answer truthfully during the voir dire portion of jury selection. Samsung said the misconduct warrants at least a new trial, if not judgment as a matter of law in its favor, an assertion Apple blasted on Friday.

“Samsung fails to meet the high bar to obtain judgment or new trial on any claim,” Apple’s opposition said. “Samsung also falls far short of showing the ‘grossly excessive or monstrous’ damages ‘clearly not supported by the evidence, or based only on speculation or guesswork’ required to disturb the jury’s award.”

When asked by the court whether he was ever involved in a lawsuit, Hogan disclosed one lawsuit but failed to mention two others, including one in which his former employer Seagate Technology Inc. sued him for breach of contract after he failed to repay a promissory note, Samsung claimed.

Samsung has a “substantial strategic relationship” with Seagate, which culminated in the widely publicized 2011 sale of a Samsung division to Seagate in a deal worth $1.375 billion, Samsung said. Samsung is now the single largest direct shareholder of Seagate.

The attorney who sued Hogan on Seagate’s behalf is the husband of a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, the law firm that is representing Samsung in the Apple litigation, according to Samsung. Samsung should have been allowed to explore those ties in questioning, it claimed.

Samsung waived its objections, though, because it knew of or could have discovered the alleged lies before the verdict, Apple said.

Samsung, meanwhile, said Friday that Apple is not entitled to the permanent injunction or additional damages it is seeking, accusing its rival of “seeking to compound an already excessive, improper jury award.”

“Apple’s motion for an injunction attempts to convert the jury’s specific infringement findings into a broad injunction that it can use to bully Samsung and third parties in an effort to stifle lawful, fair competition,” Samsung said.

In its pursuit of the injunction, Apple is seeking to deprive consumers not only of the products that Apple has accused but also unspecified other products that Apple will argue infringe or merely include a feature “not more than colorably different” from features that Apple accuses, according to Samsung.

Los Angeles – TiVo Inc. told a Texas federal court Monday that its damages for its digital video recording technology patent infringement claims against Motorola Mobility Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc. may amount to billions of dollars, due to the vast scope of the alleged infringement.

“Motorola’s massive production of infringing DVRs dwarfs the numbers of accused products at issue in TiVo’s previous cases, TiVo said in a reply in support of its motion to consolidate the case with a related one involving Cisco Systems for pretrial purposes.

“TiVo’s damages claim is likely to run into the billions of dollars,” the motion said. “TiVo seeks its day in court as quickly as possible under a schedule that allows this case to be fully, fairly and efficiently adjudicated.”

Adjusting the schedules in the Motorola and Cisco cases by a matter of months would serve all of those goals, the company said.

In opposing TiVo’s motion, Motorola and Time Warner are ignoring the fact that consolidation of the cases would prevent duplicative Markman hearings, depositions, document discovery and other pretrial proceedings, according to TiVo.

Motorola argued in its opposition to TiVo’s motion that it has its own patent claims against TiVo that have nothing to do with Cisco, and that the motion came too late as the judge has already split the two apart for separate proceedings. Motorola is further along in the process than Cisco, it said.

The court has expressly stated that administering both cases will allow it to coordinate them efficiently, which is precisely what TiVo is requesting in its motion, TiVo said.

“Instead of discussing the practical issues that favor consolidation, Motorola repeats its unfounded claim that TiVo is seeking to delay this case,” the reply said. “This charge is wrong and makes no logical sense.”

TiVo’s high expectations for damages are based in part on earlier multimillion dollar patent settlements to its advantage.

In September TiVo reached a deal to settle its DVR patent infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications, under which Verizon agreed to pay $250.4 million and enter a mutual patent licensing arrangement.

The company also previously struck deals with Dish Network for $600 million and with AT&T for $215 million.

Los Angeles – A new study has revealed that 40 percent of all patent litigation in the U.S. in the past year was filed by non-practicing entities, also known as patent trolls, which amounts to double the proportion of patent cases such entities filed five years ago.

The study, soon to be published in the Duke Law & Technology Review and made available online on Oct. 7, was authored by Robin Cooper Feldman of the University of California Hastings College of Law, Sara Jeruss of Lex Machina Inc. and Joshua W. Walker of the Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse.

The study was completed at the behest of the Government Accountability Office, which Congress told in 2011 to study the effects of patent trolls on patent litigation, as part of the patent reform-minded America Invents Act. The study refers to trolls as “patent monetization entities,” or simply “monetizers.”

Such entities were also heavily represented among those filing the most lawsuits, with trolls accounting for four of the five parties who filed the greatest number of lawsuits in the last five years, the study shows.

Universities, meanwhile, which are sometimes considered non-practicing entities on the theory that they do not make any products, accounted for only a miniscule 0.2 percent of the first-named plaintiffs who filed lawsuits in the period studied. The number rises slightly when second-named plaintiffs are included, but remains quite small, the authors said.

The study also shows that cases filed by patent trolls are unlikely to advance very far in the trial process, and are often settled prior to the summary judgment phase of litigation.

“The data confirm in a dramatic fashion what many scholars and commentators have suspected: patent monetization entities play a role in a substantial portion of the lawsuits filed today,” the study says.

The study’s results are even more striking, the authors say, considering the fact that it only looked at patent infringement disputes that reached the courtroom.

“From all appearances, lawsuits filed are only the tip of the iceberg, and a major operating company may face hundreds of invitations to license for every lawsuit,” the study says. “Much of the bargaining, posturing and payment concludes without any party filing suit. Thus, one can only imagine the magnitude of the impact that patent monetization has on the patent system, and on the economy, as a whole.”

Los Angeles – The Federal Circuit said Tuesday it will convene a full en banc panel of its judges to reconsider a hotly contested three-judge panel July ruling of the appeals court upholding four financial software patents, for which the court has come under assault for allowing a too-abstract idea to receive patent protection.

On rehearing, the appeals court directed appellant Alice Corp. and CLS Bank International, which sued Alice for a declaratory judgment that its patents were invalid and unenforceable, to file additional briefs on what test the court should adopt to determine whether a computer-implemented invention is a patent ineligible abstract idea, and when, if ever, the presence of a computer in a claim lends patent eligibility to an otherwise patent-ineligible idea.

The Federal Circuit also requested more briefing on the question of whether, in assessing the patent eligibility of a computer-implemented invention, it should matter whether the invention is claimed as a method, system, or storage medium, and whether such claims should at times be considered equivalent for Section 101 purposes.

The 2-1 panel ruling in July reversed a lower court’s summary judgment order invalidating Alice’s U.S. Patent Numbers 5,970,479, 6,912,510, 7,149,720 and 7,725,375.

The majority opinion, authored by Circuit Judge Richard Linn and joined by Circuit Judge Kathleen O’Malley, held that the patents’ system, method, and media claims at issue are not drawn to mere abstract ideas but rather are directed to practical applications of invention falling within the categories of patent eligible subject matter.

The patents cover a computerized trading platform for exchanging obligations in which a trusted third party settles obligations between a first and second party so as to eliminate “settlement risk.” Settlement risk is the risk that only one party’s obligation will be paid, leaving the other party without its principal.

The July ruling set off panic in the technology sector over the patentability of abstract concepts that do not specify how to put a given invention into practice. Industry players including Google Inc., Twitter, Hewlett-Packard and Red Hat filed an amicus brief with the appeals court in support of rehearing, as did the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Federal Circuit panel’s majority opinion came hand in hand with a sharply worded dissent from Circuit Judge Sharon Prost.

“The majority resists the Supreme Court’s unanimous directive to apply the patentable subject matter test with more vigor,” she said. “Worse yet, it creates an entirely new framework that in effect allows courts to avoid evaluating patent eligibility under Section 101 whenever they so desire.”