Goodix evidence submitted to the U.S. Patent Office Court includes publications and patents by MIT Media Lab, Mitsubishi Electronics and many others.

Shenzhen Huiding Technology announced that the company has filed multiple offensive administrative trials via petitions for inter partes review before the United States Patent and Trademark Office to challenge the validity of all claims of four U.S. Patent Nos. 7,868,874, 8,338,724, 8,558,811, and 8,952,916 that have been asserted against Goodix by Synaptics Inc., a U.S. company located in California, before the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in complaints filed in April of 2015.

Goodix has presented overwhelming evidence in its filed offensive IPR petitions to demonstrate that all patent claims in the four asserted Synaptics patents merely cover well-known and established technologies that were developed and published by others many years before Synaptics’ belated patent filings.  Goodix’ evidence submitted to the U.S. Patent Office Court includes publications and patents by MIT Media Lab, Mitsubishi Electronics and many others.  In addition, Goodix’s evidence provides multiple independent invalidity grounds against each Synaptics’ patent claim.

Inter partes review or IPR proceedings are part of the new administrative trial proceedings enacted under the American Invents Act and took effect in September of 2012.  Since its inception, nearly 3,300 IPR petitions were filed before the U.S. Patent Office Court, a special administrative trial tribunal established by the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board.  For the fiscal year of 2015, over 1,400 IPR petitions have been filed.  The IPR trials have become the most used proceedings in U.S. patent litigation and the PTAB has replaced the Eastern District Court of Texas as the No. 1 patent litigation venue in the U.S.  Once the PTAB decides to institute an IPR trial, the PTAB must complete the trial to reach a final written decision in 12 months.  The statistics of the PTAB IPR trial proceedings have shown that an IPR proceeding is a proven effective and expeditious trial process for challenging the validity of U.S. patents of poor quality or having overly broad claims.  The latest USPTO IPR trial statistics through July 31, 2015 show that, the PTAB instituted 69.1% of IPR petitions in the fiscal year of 2015 so far.  In all IPR trials instituted by PTAB that have reached a final written decision on the merits since September of 2012, the PTAB found all challenged claims invalid in 66.0% of the IPR trials and invalidated at least one claim in 84.1% of the IPR trials.

“Goodix launched its offensive IPR trial attacks against Synaptics patents because Goodix’s evidence filed at the U.S. Patent Office Court overwhelmingly demonstrates that the Synaptics patents merely claim well-known technologies and are invalid,” said Mr. David Zhang, founder and CEO of Goodix. “Goodix is a technology leader in its own industry and will vigorously defend itself in the highly competitive U.S. market and other market places around the world to ensure Goodix’s fair opportunities to collaborate with other technology leaders to bring the very best mobile computing technologies to the consumers.” Mr. Zhang further stated that Goodix will continue to pursue all offenses and defenses available to Goodix because Synaptics’ infringement claims are baseless and are without merit.

Goodix will continue timely and high-quality customer support for existing touchscreen products and will continue research and development for new innovative touchscreen products and other mobile computing technologies.  Earlier this month, Goodix announced the expansion of its operations in Silicon Valley and Southern California to better support the growing demand for its broad line of products and technologies that redefine how users interact with their mobile devices, improve data security and transform the mobile computing experience.  The expansion will enable Goodix to work more closely with top companies to bring the latest Goodix technologies in fingerprint sensing and other mobile features to users.

“Our expanded U.S. presence begins in Silicon Valley and also Southern California, two of the most innovative regions in mobile computing technologies in the world,” said CEO Mr. Zhang. “This expansion by Goodix will enable us to better support a growing pipeline of design wins for our fingerprint solutions and Human Interface Technology that make mobile phones, tablets, notebook computers, wearables and other mobile devices more secure and even easier to use and enjoy.”

Source:http://ipfrontline.com/2015/08/goodix-initiates-offensive-challenge-of-synaptics-patents/