Article One Partners LLC, a global community working to legitimize the validity of patents, announced seven new patent studies, as well as two winners who will share the $50,000 prize for discovering prior art in Article One's Garmin/SP Technologies Patent Study.
The Study relates to a graphical interface providing a touch screen keyboard display that may not be minimized, maximized, closed or deleted. In a 2008 complaint filed in federal court in Chicago, SP Technologies LLC (SPT) accused Garmin Limited and Garmin International Inc. of infringing SPT's patent.
Garmin is a market leader in the portable navigation devices market.
SPT is the owner of US Patent No. 6,784,873 B1. In its complaint, SPT accused Garmin of infringing the patent by the sale of Garmin's touch screen personal navigation devices "(such as the nüvi 260)."
Garmin's nüvi product line is part of Garmin's auto/mobile segment. Garmin reported in its Nov. 5, 2008 10-Q that the auto/mobile segment generated $626.506M of the Company's $870.355M revenues (71.98%) in the third quarter of 2008 and that the "automotive/mobile segment revenue grew 27.3% from the year-ago period, on the strength of the nüvi series of personal navigation devices."
This litigation follows prior industry action from SPT involving this patent including infringement actions that have settled against Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch (settled May, 2008) and Magellan Navigation products (settled January, 2009), in addition to ongoing cases against Samsung Group, HTC Corporation and TomTom.
The determination of winners was based on Article One's analysis, including review and analysis of outside counsel, leading Article One to reach the opinion that the prior art is invalidating because it teaches what is claimed in the subject patent US Patent No. 6,784,873 B1.
Article One believes that the claimed inventions would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the relevant art at the time of the inventions.
Importantly, only a US federal court or the US Patent Office can invalidate a US patent. Article One is announcing only its own opinion based on its analysis of the prior art for purposes of determining winners to its Patent Studies.
The winning references are the primary prior art relied upon for Article One's opinion. In addition, there were highly relevant additional prior art references submitted. Parties interested in licensing access to the collection of relevant prior art should contact Article One directly.
Article One Partners also announced that seven new patent studies have been posted to the site for Advisors to review (including a Study on the Apple multi-touch patent). The selection of Patent Studies is driven by litigation, questions and/or dispute surrounding patent validity.
SOURCE:AGIPNEWS
