Complete Story
07/16/2014
Patent Trolling Update
Federal Appeals Court Confirms That Acacia's Device Profiling Patent is Invalid
FREMONT, Calif. - Electronics For Imaging, Inc., a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, announced another key victory in a patent troll case filed against the company. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirmed that a device profile patent asserted by a subsidiary of the non-practicing entity Acacia Research Corporation against EFI and 31 other companies is invalid.
Acacia subsidiary Digitech Image Technologies, LLC filed a patent infringement suit in a California federal court in August 2012 against EFI, certain EFI strategic partners and others. In August 2013, the district court invalidated the patent and entered judgment in favor of EFI and the other defendants.
Digitech appealed and, on July 11, 2014, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's decision. The Federal Circuit recognized that the device profiles claimed in Digitech's patent were simply "a collection of intangible color and spatial information" and therefore not eligible for patenting. Although Digitech had previously extracted settlements from some companies before the district court's decision, EFI opposed Digitech's claims from the start.
"The Federal Circuit's decision confirms what we have maintained from the outset: that the patent is invalid and that EFI and its partners should not have been sued in the first place," said EFI General Counsel Bryan Ko. "We will continue to fight these kinds of meritless lawsuits in as many courts as is necessary to protect ourselves, our partners and our customers. As we have said before, we will not be bullied into settling abusive lawsuits by patent trolls."
Source: Press release from EFI
