TQ Delta, LLC v. CommScope Holding Company, Inc.

TQ Delta, LLC v. CommScope Holding Company, Inc. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Eastern District of Texas on all three issues. Substantial evidence supported the jury's finding that claim 14 of the '008 patent was not infringed, the "flag signal" construction for the '835 patent was correct, and any error in the cost-savings damages instruction was invited and not manifestly unjust. A patentee that relies only on standard-essentiality to prove infringement can lose before a jury if its expert's essentiality opinion is conclusory. A party that proposes or endorses instruction language cannot challenge it on appeal. Affirmed. Stipulation: the court held that CommScope's stipulation that the '008 patent was subject to ITU commitments was limited to FRAND damages. The instructions and verdict form left infringement to the jury, and the court deferred to the district court's reading of the stipulation. '008 infringement: TQ Delta's theory was that the patent was standard-essential to VDSL2, so compliance meant infringement. Substantial evidence supported noninfringement. Its expert gave no basis for essentiality, and the standard says the ITU takes no position on essentiality. The expert also conceded that the standard describes zero-degree rotation and that the DC subcarrier shall not be rotated. The jury was free to reject uncontradicted expert testimony. Claim construction ('008): the construction of "computing a phase shift" as "computing the amount by which a phase is adjusted for each carrier signal" left room for the jury to find that a zero-degree rotation does not meet the limitation. The Delaware court's construction of a different term did not control. '835 invalidity: the court affirmed the construction of "flag signal" as a signal indicating when an updated FIP setting is to be used, excluding the FEC codeword counter value. "Pre-defined" governs when switching occurs, not what the flag may contain, so TQ Delta's proposed bar on any timing information would import a negative limitation from the embodiments. Damages: TQ Delta invited any error in the cost-savings instruction by proposing and endorsing the "how much CommScope saved" language. It also showed no manifest injustice, because no authority requires downstream savings in a cost-savings model and the instructions let the jury consider customer-benefit evidence under the Georgia-Pacific factors. CommScope's conditional cross-appeal was moot. infringement claim construction damages waiver / forfeiture § 102 § 103 non-precedential