In a legal battle with high stakes, a U.S. appeals court has sided with tech behemoths Micron, Dell, and HP, upholding rulings from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) despite allegations of a potential conflict of interest. The companies were embroiled in a patent dispute with Unification Technologies, which accused them of infringing on patents related to memory chip data management.
Unification contended that Kathi Vidal, the attorney representing the tech companies before she became the USPTO’s director, could have influenced the judges who invalidated its patents. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed these claims, with Circuit Judge Raymond Chen stating that Unification provided no evidence that Vidal’s prior involvement affected the administrative judges’ decisions.
The lawsuit dates back to 2020, when Unification sued the three companies in Texas federal court. Though the cases against HP and Dell were eventually dismissed, the dispute with Micron persists. The tech giants sought the intervention of the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to challenge the validity of Unification’s patents, a move that was successful.
Despite Unification’s arguments that the PTAB judges were compromised by Vidal’s subsequent role as their superior, the appeals court found no merit in these claims. The court underscored that the PTAB judges were not influenced by Vidal in any way that would impact their bonuses or performance evaluations.
The legal skirmish continues for Micron, while HP and Dell have emerged unscathed from the litigation. The broader implications of this ruling reinforce the independence of the USPTO’s decision-making process, even when former attorneys for involved parties take on leadership roles within the office.
The case is formally recognized as Unification Technologies LLC v. Micron Technology Inc, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 23-1348.
