Juniper Networks Nixes Two Brixham Patents in IPRs

07.2015

In a victory for long-time Irell & Manella client Juniper Networks, Inc., the Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated each of the claims from two router patents that Brixham Solutions Ltd. is asserting against Juniper in a case in Northern California. In two final written decisions issued on July 27, the PTAB found that all of the asserted claims of Brixham’s U.S. Patent No. 7,940,652 and U.S. Patent No. 7,535,895 are obvious over the prior art Juniper had identified in its petitions. The PTAB also denied Brixham’s motions to exclude the declarations of Juniper’s technical expert in both proceedings, finding that the motions were “procedurally defective for the reasons argued by Petitioner,” and that Brixham’s substantive arguments were “lacking in merit.”

Brixham sued Juniper in February 2013 in the Northern District of California, alleging infringement based on four router patents that it had purchased from former Silicon Valley start-up Hammerhead Systems, Inc. in a bankruptcy sale. Brixham dropped one of the patents from the case prior to serving its infringement contentions, and then dropped another patent in response to Juniper’s motion to strike its infringement contentions. Juniper then petitioned the PTAB for inter partes review of the remaining two patents, and requested that the district court stay the underlying infringement case. The district court granted the stay in May 2014, and the PTAB initiated inter partes review for both patents a few months later in August 2014.

Juniper is represented by Jonathan Kagan and Rebecca Carson.