A federal court of appeals voted last week against the UT System Board of Regents in a patent infringement lawsuit filed more than three years ago over predictable text technology. The court ruled that 14 of the companies the regents sued did not infringe on the patent.
The technology for the patent was co-discovered by George Kondraske, a University of Texas at Arlington professor of electrical and biomedical engineering. The UT System owned the patent since 1987, until it expired last year when it hit the 20-year mark. Under U.S. Patent Law, a patent is only valid for 20 years.
The lawsuit was part of a larger suit against more than 40 companies worldwide said to have infringed on the UT-owned patent - called the '112 patent, named so after the last three digits in the patent number. According to the lawsuit, the '112 patent is a "character pattern recognition and communications apparatus" patent, commonly known as predictable text on cell phones. When the regents filed the lawsuit in March 2005, they claimed the companies were using technology too similar to that in the '112 patent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the decision made last May by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, where the lawsuit was originally filed.
Zi Corporation sells software similar to Kondraske's and in the court process defended a company named in the lawsuit that buys the Zi Corporation software. Milos Djokovic, corporation president and CEO, said he was pleased with the verdict in the appeals court.
"We are delighted that our technology has been vindicated as non-infringing in this matter," Djokovic said in a statement.
UT System Vice Chancellor and General Counsel Barry Burgdorf said the patent expired last year, but the regents were suing for infringements from before 2007, when the patent was active.
Last week's failed lawsuit comes after several victories for the regents in the courtroom. A Web site dedicated to the '112 patent - created by the UT System and the attorneys representing the regents - has announced four separate settlements. The only publicly disclosed settlement, which was between the regents and Research In Motion Limited, a designer and manufacturer of wireless software and hardware, required the manufacturer to pay $900,000 to the regents and another $900,000 in the form of a research grant to the University of Texas at Arlington, according to the '112 patent site.
Burgdorf said the failed lawsuit was disappointing, but that money from past settlements can still be used for educational purposes.
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