Annual report pursuant to Section 13 and 15(d)

LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

v3.6.0.2
LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2016
Notes to Financial Statements  
NOTE J – LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

[1]. In September 2011, the Company initiated patent litigation against sixteen (16) data networking equipment manufacturers (and affiliated entities) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, for infringement of its Remote Power Patent.  Named as defendants in the lawsuit, excluding related parties, were Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., Allied Telesis, Inc., Avaya Inc., AXIS Communications Inc., Dell, Inc., GarrettCom, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Huawei Technologies USA, Juniper Networks, Inx., Motorola Solutions, Inc., NEC Corporation, Polycom Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., ShoreTel, Inc., Sony Electronics, Inc., and Transitions Networks, Inc.  The Company seeks monetary damages based upon reasonable royalties.  During the year ended December 31, 2012, the Company reached settlement agreements with defendants Motorola Solutions, Inc. ("Motorola"), Transition Networks, Inc. ("Transition Networks") and GarretCom, Inc. ("GarretCom").  In February 2013, the Company reached settlement agreements with Allied Telesis, Inc. ("Allied Telesis") and NEC Corporation ("NEC").  As part of the settlements, Motorola, Transition Networks, GarretCom, Allied Telesis and NEC each entered into a non-exclusive license agreement for the Company's Remote Power Patent pursuant to which each such defendant agreed to license the Remote Power Patent for its full term (which expires in March 2020) and pay a license initiation fee and quarterly or annual royalties based on their sales of PoE products.  In March 2015 and July 2015, the Company reached settlement agreements with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. ("Samsung"), Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei") and ShoreTel Inc. ("ShoreTel").  Samsung and Huawei each received a non-exclusive fully-paid license for the Remote Power Patent for its remaining life.  ShoreTel entered into a non-exclusive license agreement for the Remote Power Patent for its full term and paid a license initiation fee and is obligated to pay quarterly royalties based upon its sales of PoE products.

In June 2016, the Company reached a settlement with Sony Corporation and affiliated entities ("Sony").  With respect to the settlement, Sony received a non-exclusive fully-paid license for the Remote Power Patent for its remaining life.  In July 2016, the Company reached a settlement with Dell, Inc.  Under the terms of the settlement, Dell received a non-exclusive license for the Remote Power Patent for its full term, Dell paid a license initiation fee of $6,000,000 and agreed to pay quarterly royalties based on its sales of PoE products.  In July 2016, the Company also reached settlement agreements with Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. and Alcatel-Lucent Holdings Inc. (collectively, "Alcatel") and ALE, USA.  Under the terms of the settlement agreements, Alcatel and ALE, USA received a non-exclusive fully paid license for the Remote Power Patent for its remaining life.  The aggregate consideration to be received by the Company from Alcatel and ALE for the fully-paid license is $4,200,000 of which $1,900,000 has been paid and the balance of $2,300,000 is payable in three equal quarterly payments beginning sixty (60) days after a ruling by the Court (which is pending) confirming the report and recommendation rendered by the Magistrate which found all of the asserted claims of the Remote Power Patent were not invalid.

On October 3, 2016, the Company entered a settlement agreement with Polycom, Inc. ("Polycom").  Under the terms of the settlement, Polycom entered into a non-exclusive license for the Company's Remote Power Patent for its full term and is obligated to pay a license initiation fee of $5,000,000 for past sales of its Power over Ethernet ("PoE") products and ongoing royalties based on its sales of PoE products.  $2,000,000 of the license initiation fee was paid within 30 days and the balance will be paid in three annual installments of $1,000,000 beginning in October, 2017. Payments due in October 2018 and October 2019 need not be paid by Polycom if all asserted claims of the Remote Power Patent have been found invalid.  Such payments in October 2018 and October 2019 have not been included in the Company's revenue for the year ended December 31, 2016.

As a result of the aforementioned settlements, the remaining four defendants in the litigation pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas are Hewlett Packard Company, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc, AXIS Communications Inc. and Avaya Inc.  The litigation has been consolidated for pre-trial issues and there will be a separate trial for each defendant.  The first of the trials is scheduled to commence on November 6, 2017.

 

[2]. In July 2010, the Company settled its patent litigation pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, against Adtran, Inc, Cisco Systems, Inc. and Cisco-Linksys, LLC, (collectively, "Cisco"), Enterasys Networks, Inc., Extreme Networks, Inc., Foundry Networks, Inc., and 3Com Corporation, Inc.  As part of the settlement, Adtran, Cisco, Enterasys, Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks each entered into a settlement agreement with the Company and entered into non-exclusive licenses for the Company's Remote Power Patent (the "Licensed Defendants").  Under the terms of the licenses, the Licensed Defendants paid the Company upon settlement approximately $32 million and also agreed to license the Remote Power Patent for its full term, which expires in March 2020.  In accordance with the Settlement and License Agreement, dated May 25, 2011, Cisco is obliged to pay the Company royalties (which began in the first quarter of 2011) based on its sales of PoE products up to maximum royalty payments per year of $9 million beginning in 2016 ($8 million through 2015) for the remaining term of the patent.  The royalty payments are subject to certain conditions including the continued validity of the Company's Remote Power Patent, and the actual royalty amounts received may be less than the cap stated above.  Under the terms of the Agreement, if the Company grants other licenses with lower royalty rates to third parties (as defined in the Agreement), Cisco shall be entitled to the benefit of the lower royalty rates provided it agrees to the material terms of such other license.  Under the terms of the Agreement, the Company has certain obligations to Cisco and if it materially breaches such terms, Cisco will be entitled to stop paying royalties to the Company.  This would have a material adverse effect on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

[3]. On April 4, 2014 and December 3, 2014, the Company initiated litigation against Google Inc.("Google") and YouTube, LLC (YouTube") in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for infringement of several of its patents within the Cox Patent Portfolio acquired from Dr. Cox (see Note H[2] hereof) which relate to the identification of media content on the Internet.  The lawsuits allege that Google and YouTube have infringed and continue to infringe certain of the Company's patents by making, using, selling and offering to sell unlicensed systems and related products and services, which include YouTube's Content ID system.

The above referenced litigations that the Company commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in April 2014 and December 2014 against Google and YouTube are currently subject to a court ordered stay which has been in effect since July 2015 as a result of proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and the pending appeals to the United States District Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, as described below.

In December 2014, Google Inc. filed four petitions to institute Inter Partes Review at the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") pertaining to patents within the Company's Cox Patent Portfolio asserted in the litigation filed in April 2014 as described above.  Google in each of the four Inter Partes Review petitions sought to invalidate certain claims of patents at issue within the Cox Patent Portfolio.  On June 23, 2015, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("PTAB") of the USPTO issued an order instituting for oral hearing each of the four petitions for Inter Partes Review.  The consolidated trial at the PTAB was held on March 9, 2016.  On June 20, 2016, the PTAB issued its Final Written Decisions in the Company's favor in the four pending IPRs.  On August 18, 2016, Google filed Notices of Appeal with respect to the PTAB's Final Written Decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the appeal is pending.

On April 13, 2015, Google filed a Petition for Covered Business Method Review (CBM) at the PTAB seeking to invalidate claims pertaining to the Company's U.S. Patent No. 8,904,464, the patent asserted in the Company's litigation against Google and YouTube filed on December 3, 2014 as referenced above.  On October 19, 2015, the PTAB issued an order instituting for oral hearing the Covered Business Method Review on certain grounds.  The oral hearing was held on May 11, 2016.  On October 18, 2016, the PTAB issued its Final Written Decision in the Company's favor.  On December 20, 2016, Google filed a Notice of Appeal to appeal the PTAB's Final Written Decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the appeal is pending.

[4]. On May 23, 2013, the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Mirror Worlds Technologies, LLC, initiated patent litigation in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, against Apple, Inc., Microsoft, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Lenovo Group Ltd., Lenovo (United States), Inc., Dell, Inc., Best Buy Co., Inc., Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and Samsung Telecommunications America L.L.C., for infringement of the Company's '227 patent (the "227 Patent") (one of the patents the Company acquired as part of the acquisition of the Mirror Worlds Patent Portfolio).  The lawsuit alleged that the defendants have infringed and continue to infringe the claims of the Company's '227 Patent by making, selling, offering to sell and using infringing products including Mac OS and Windows operating systems and personal computers and tablets that include versions of those operating systems, and by encouraging others to make, sell, and use these products.  In December 2013, the litigation was severed into two consolidated actions, Mirror Worlds v. Apple, et. al. and Mirror Worlds v. Microsoft, et. al.

 

On November 6, 2015, the Company entered into a settlement agreement with Microsoft pursuant to which Microsoft (including its customers) received a non-exclusive fully paid license for the Mirror Worlds Patent Portfolio for its remaining life in consideration of a lump sum payment to us of $4,650,000.  In addition, as customers of Microsoft, the pending litigation was also dismissed against Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Lenovo Group Ltd., Lenovo, Inc., Dell, Inc., Best Buy Co., Inc., Samsung Electronics of America, Inc. and Samsung Telecommunications America L.L.C.

On July 8, 2016, Mirror Worlds Technologies, LLC, the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, entered into a settlement agreement with Apple Inc. in connection with litigation in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, for infringement of the Company's '227 Patent.  Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Apple received a fully paid non-exclusive license to the '227 Patent for its full term (which expired in June 2016), along with certain rights to other patents in the Company's patent portfolio.  The Company received $25,000,000 from Apple for the settlement and fully paid non-exclusive license.