26
Oct
By Eric Schweibenz
On October 23, 2009, the International Trade Commission issued a notice stating that it has determined that there has been no violation of Section 337 in Certain Flash Memory Controllers, Drives, Memory Cards, and Media Players and Products Containing Same (Inv. No. 337-TA-619).

By way of background, and as explained in our April 14 and August 25 posts, this investigation was instituted on December 12, 2007, based on the complaint of SanDisk Corp. (“SanDisk”) of Milpitas, California.  According to the notice, over 50 respondents were named in the complaint, and approximately half of the named respondents either settled out of the investigation or defaulted.  On August 24, 2009, the International Trade Commission issued a notice determining to review in part the April 10 final Initial Determination issued by ALJ Charles E. Bullock.

According to the October 23 notice, the Commission determined to “(1) reverse the ALJ’s finding that claim 17 of the ‘424 patent does not cover single-page updates; (2) reverse the ALJ’s finding that the claim term ‘reading and assembling data from the first and second plurality of pages’ as recited in claim 20 of the ‘424 patent excludes the so-called table method as disclosed in Figure 12; (3) affirm the ALJ’s finding that the accused products do not infringe the asserted claims of the ‘424 patent; and (4) affirm the ALJ’s finding that none of the asserted claims of the ‘424 patent were proven to be invalid as anticipated or obvious in view of the prior art considered by the ALJ.”  The Commission further determined that “[g]iven the Commission’s affirmance of the ALJ’s determination that SanDisk failed to establish that the accused controllers infringe claim 17 of the ‘424 patent, the Commission declines to reach the issue of whether the ALJ should have considered the Sinclair PCT publication as evidence of prior art to claim 17 of the ‘424 patent.”