APPEALS COURT DISMISSES PLASMA APPEAL
A federal court dismissed an appeal by the U. of Ill. that sought a shield of sovereign immunity from counterclaims filed by Fujitsu in an on-going legal battle over patents for plasma displays. The D.C. Appeals Court ruled that the university’s “entitlement” to the 11th Amendment guarantee of sovereign immunity can’t be “conclusively determined” and dismissed the appeal due to a “lack of jurisdiction.”
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U.S. Dist. Court Judge Joseph Spero, San Francisco, had dismissed the university’s claims for sovereign immunity in finding that Fujitsu’s counterclaims of “misuse and attempted misuse” of the plasmas patents and “inequitable conduct” were the same as its defense against a suit filed against it in Dec. 2000. The university, along with licensee Competitive Technologies, sued Fujitsu claiming that it infringed patents granted in 1989 and 1992 describing an improved address driver circuit for plasma panels. Spero ruled last year that portions of the 1989 patent were “invalid for indefiniteness.” The driver circuit, invented by Larry Weber and 2 other university faculty members, provided a means for applying a high level pulse of one polarity to a series of select address electrodes “in accordance with desired information to be entered into a panel.” Weber went on to found Plasmaco, a plasma panel development company he later sold to Matsushita.
In addition to the federal lawsuit, the university also filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) that was later dismissed. Fujitsu, which accused the university and Competitive Technologies of “abuse of process” for filing the complaint with the ITC, has argued that the university waived its sovereign immunity once it filed suit. The university countered that Fujitsu’s defense claims should have been dismissed because they don’t allege “sufficient facts” to “constitute an affirmative defense or contain surplus allegations of fact.”
The appeals panel said it couldn’t rule on the university’s request for sovereign immunity until the case had been fully decided by Spero. “Considering the issue of waiver at this stage of the proceeding would be particularly in appropriate because the issues remaining for the district court to decide -- the propriety of the affirmative defenses -- are themselves intimately bound up with the merits,” the appeals court said. George Beck and Brian Busey, attorneys for Ill. U. and Fujitsu, respectively, weren’t immediately available for comment.