Boston – Global law firm K&L Gates LLP recently secured judgment in favor of Lenovo (United States) Inc., one of the world’s largest data center technology vendors offering expert capability in servers, storage, networking and software defined solutions, in a patent infringement action filed by Intellectual Ventures I [and II] LLC (IV). The case, filed on May 10, 2016, involved five patents asserted against numerous Lenovo server and data center storage products. 

Over the course of dispute, the asserted claims of three patents – U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,387,132, 8,275,827, and 6,775,745 – were invalidated by the Patent Office in Inter Partes Review proceedings, which are final with all appeals exhausted. IV dropped its claims against Lenovo involving a fourth patent – U.S. Pat. No. 6,516,442 – last summer following an adverse claim construction ruling, leaving a single patent – U.S. Pat. No. 6,968,459 (“the ’459 patent”) – remaining in the case.

In August, the District of Massachusetts granted Lenovo’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement for the final patent. In her decision, Judge Saris ruled: “Because it is undisputed that the accused storage device, and not the accused storage drive, ‘encrypt[s] digital data’ and ‘writ[es] encrypted digital data’ within the accused Lenovo products, Lenovo is entitled to summary judgment…” The Order provides Lenovo a complete win at the District Court.

The K&L Gates team that advised Lenovo was led by Boston partner Chris Centurelli, and included counsel David Simons and Chicago associate Gina Jenero Johnson. In addition to demonstrating the strength of K&L Gates’ IP litigation practice, the result further reflects K&L Gates’ specific capabilities in the server, data center and computer storage technology space.