Federal Judge Rejects Hitachi Bid for New Trial in Patent Infringement Suit
A federal judge rejected Hitachi’s bid for a new trial in a patent infringement suit against TPV Technology, ruling that Hitachi’s claims of allegedly false testimony didn’t warrant retrying the case.
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Rodney Gilstrap, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, said Hitachi changed how it characterized TPV executive Mondy Houng’s testimony that Hitachi had threatened to sue the company and file a complaint with the International Trade Commission if a licensing agreement for DTV-related patents wasn’t reached. While Hitachi initially contended in court papers that Houng’s testimony was “false,” it later changed its position, arguing the statements were “misleading if not downright untruthful,” Gilstrap said.
Houng’s testimony during an April trial, along with statements in 2010 as the companies attempted to negotiate a licensing pact, were part of a suit Hitachi filed against TPV. A federal jury in April found TPV and 242 of its TVs didn’t infringe patents covering a means for receiving and displaying ATSC standard-compliant broadcasts. TPV has sold TVs in the U.S. under the Envision and AOC brands and is an OEM supplier. Hitachi’s patent covered products with a receiver, demodulator, error corrector and digital expanders for video and audio content, the former used compressed MPEG-2. Hitachi also sued Vizio, which settled with the company on April 1, according to court records. Hitachi filed a motion in May seeking a new trial based on allegedly false testimony.
"The standard for a new trial in this circumstance is not potentially misleading testimony, but rather willfully committing perjury,” Gilstrap said. “These are very different standards. Although Hitachi was clearly aware of TPV’s allegedly false statement before this trial, Hitachi chose not use it to impeach Mr. Houng during cross-examination. This allegedly false statement is not a justifiable basis” to require spending the “parties’ and court’s resources on a new trial."
Gilstrap also turned aside Hitachi’s claim that it “suffered prejudice” by TPV using a reference to General Instruments’ DigiCipher DTV technology to characterize Hitachi as a “schoolyard bully.” TPV had pointed to DigiCipher technology as evidence of “prior art” that could be used to counter Hitachi’s patent infringement claims. DigiCipher was an all-digital HDTV system for over-the-air broadcast TVs and a document describing it, drafted by General Instrument in 1990, discloses “all the elements” of one of the claims in the Hitachi patent, Gilstrap said. General Instrument was the first company to submit an all-digital TV system proposal to the FCC. The jury in the case had “sufficient” evidence to find TPV proved that its DigiCipher reference was “prior art in this case,” Gilstrap said.
Among the four patents at the heart of the case was one issued in 1996 for a TV broadcasting method and system that enabled broadcasts between transmitting and receiving equipment. Other patents, issued in 2003 and 2007, were for image display and digital information recording systems, according to court records. The most recent of the patents was granted Hitachi in August 2011 for a digital information receiving apparatus and method for receiving digital video and audio signals, according U.S. Patent and Trademark Office documents