Notable Successes

In the Northern District of California, Desmarais LLP achieved a complete defense victory for Apple, securing dismissal with prejudice of patent infringement claims related to four communications-routing patents.  Voip-Pal brought the infringement claims against Apple’s FaceTime and Messages applications, and sought enhanced damages for alleged willful infringement.
 
Desmarais LLP successfully argued that, under the Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank ruling, Voip-Pal’s patents (Nos. 9,537,762; 9,813,330; 9,826,002; and 9,948,549) did not claim patent-eligible inventions.  In a November 1, 2019 ruling, Judge Lucy Koh wrote that, under the Alice framework, “all of the asserted claims [by Voip-Pal] are invalid for failure to state patentable subject matter under § 101.”
 
Earlier in 2019, Desmarais LLP secured dismissal of similar patent infringement claims brought by Voip-Pal, convincing the district court that those patents (Nos. 8,542,815 and 9,179,005) likewise did not claim patent-eligible subject matter.
 
The Desmarais LLP team representing Apple in the case included partners John Desmarais, Ameet Modi, and Peter Magic.