A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s rulings favoring Micron (MU.O), Dell (DELL.N), and HP (HPQ.N), affirming the decisions even though the attorney who represented these tech companies later became the office’s director.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that Unification Technologies, the patent owner and the companies’ adversary in the USPTO case, failed to demonstrate that Kathi Vidal’s previous involvement influenced the administrative judges who invalidated its patents.
Unification’s lead attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, while Linda Coberly of Winston & Strawn, who represented Micron, Dell, and HP, and a USPTO spokesperson also declined to comment.
In 2020, Unification filed a lawsuit against Micron, Dell, and HP in Texas federal court, accusing them of infringing patents related to managing and deleting data in memory chips. While the courts dismissed the cases against HP and Dell, the Micron case remains ongoing.
Later that year, Vidal, then a partner at Winston & Strawn, represented the tech companies when they petitioned the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to invalidate the patents. After President Joe Biden nominated Vidal to head the office in 2021, she was confirmed in 2022 and subsequently recused herself from the case.
The board ultimately invalidated Unification’s patents later that year. Unification argued at the Federal Circuit that the case improperly forced PTAB judges to “evaluate the arguments of their boss” and claimed that judges were “monetarily disincentivized” from ruling against Vidal due to her influence over their performance reviews.
However, U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Chen, writing for a three-judge panel, stated that Unification “provided no evidence that the Director controls [PTAB judge] bonuses or performance reviews.” He further clarified that a PTAB judge would have no reason to believe that their decision “could affect their bonus determination because of the way that the Director might react.”
The case is Unification Technologies LLC v. Micron Technology Inc, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 23-1348.
