Micron: Micron, Dell, HP win appeal over dispute claims linked to U.S. patent officer

A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld rulings by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Micron, Dell and horsepowerfinding that the decisions could stand even though the lawyer representing the tech companies later became the office’s director. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the companies’ adversary in the USPTO case, the patent owner Unification Technologieshad not shown that Kathi Vidal’s prior involvement in the case influenced the administrative judges who invalidated her patents.

Unification’s lead attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision. Micron, Dell and HP’s attorney, Linda Coberly of Winston & Strawn, and a USPTO spokesperson declined to comment.

In 2020, Unification sued Micron, Dell, and HP for infringing patents related to data management and deletion on memory chips in federal court in Texas. The HP and Dell cases have since been dismissed, while the Micron case remains ongoing. The tech companies, represented by Vidal, then a partner at Winston & Strawn, asked the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to invalidate the patents that same year. President Joe Biden nominated Vidal to lead the office in 2021, and she was confirmed in 2022, after which she recused herself from the case.

Later that year, the board invalidated Unification’s patents. Unification argued before the Federal Circuit that the case improperly required PTAB judges to “evaluate their boss’s arguments” and said they were “economically disincentivized” from ruling against Vidal because she reviews their performance.

U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Chen wrote for a three-judge panel on Friday that Unification “provided no evidence that the Director controls [PTAB judge] bonuses or performance evaluations,” and that a PTAB judge would have no reason to believe that his decision “could affect the determination of his bonus because of how 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.