This morning, the Federal Circuit issued one nonprecedential opinion in a patent case and one nonprecedential opinion in a veterans case. Here are the introductions to the opinions.
Evolved Wireless, LLC v. HTC Corporation (Nonprecedential)
Plaintiff Evolved Wireless, LLC (“Evolved”) is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 7,809,373 (“the ’373 patent”). Evolved appeals a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware granting summary judgment in five related cases on Evolved’s claim of infringement of the ’373 patent in favor of defendants HTC Corp., HTC America, Inc., Motorola Mobility LLC, ZTE (USA) Inc., Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Mobile Oy, Nokia Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (collectively the “Defendants”). The district court concluded that Evolved’s patent infringement claims were barred by a license agreement and the doctrine of patent exhaustion. Although the district court correctly interpreted the license agreement and concluded that the agreement barred the infringement claims for the period that it was in effect, the summary judgment order did not address the question whether the license agreement had been terminated, such that the license did not exist for the post-termination period. We therefore affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand for further proceedings.
Monk v. Tran (Nonprecedential)
Claimants-appellants Mr. Conley F. Monk, Jr., Mr. Tom Coyne, Mr. William Dolphin, Mr. Jimmie Hudson, Mr. Lyle Obie, and Mr. Stanley Stokes (collectively, Appellants or petitioners) are military veterans who sought disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), had their requests denied by the VA Regional Office (RO), and subsequently appealed their respective denials under the “legacy appeals” system to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (Board). After waiting a period of time for decisions from the Board, Appellants filed a petition for writ of mandamus at the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Veterans Court) alleging unreasonable delay by the Board in acting on their appeals. The Veterans Court denied the petition with respect to Mr. Dolphin, finding no unreasonable delay, and dismissed the petition with respect to all other petitioners as moot, due to the Board by then having issued decisions on their appeals. Appellants appeal both decisions. As to the latter disposition of mootness, we affirm, and as to the former, we dismiss the appeal as now moot because Mr. Dolphin has received a Board decision on his appeal.