TQ Delta v. CommScope Holding Company
Panel: Lourie, Wallach, Chen
The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of TQ Delta's post-trial motions regarding the '008 and '835 patents covering DSL technology. TQ Delta argued that CommScope's accused DSL modems necessarily infringed claim 14 of the '008 patent because the patent was standard-essential to the ITU's VDSL2 standard and the accused products complied with that standard. The jury found the '008 patent not infringed and the '835 patent invalid, awarding $11.125 million in damages on other infringed patents.
On the '008 patent noninfringement finding, the court applied the standard that JMOL is appropriate only when evidence is so overwhelming that reasonable jurors could not disagree. The court found TQ Delta failed to meet this burden where disputed factual questions remained about whether the VDSL2 standard computed a phase shift "for each carrier signal" as required by the claims—specifically whether a zero-degree rotation for certain subcarriers constituted computing an "amount" of phase shift and whether all relevant carrier signals underwent the claimed phase shift combination. The court also rejected TQ Delta's threshold argument that CommScope had stipulated to standard-essentiality for infringement purposes, noting that infringement remained a jury question on the verdict form and CommScope consistently contested both essentiality and infringement at trial.