The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the victory of Apple, Google, and LG Electronics in a patent dispute, rejecting an appeal filed by Gestures Technology Partners. The case involved the right to challenge an expired patent, ultimately confirming the patent examiner's jurisdiction over expired patents.
Founded in 2013 by inventor Timothy Pryor, Gestures holds patents related to motion-sensing technology developed in the 1990s. In 2021, the company sued several tech companies for infringing its mobile phone camera technology patents, alleging that these companies had infringed before the patents expired in 2020 but had not been challenged during their validity period. In response, Apple, Google, and LG filed for patent invalidation with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a popular mechanism among tech companies. The PTAB ultimately removed most of the patent, and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the entire patent invalid in January of this year.
The core of the legal dispute lies in whether expired patents still involve public rights. The Supreme Court previously ruled that the patent examiner can review valid patents because they involve public rights. Gestures argued that expired patents should only be adjudicated in federal court. The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the appeal supported the position of the technology companies and the Patent and Trademark Office, namely that the examination of expired patents remains a matter of public interest. Neither Gestures' lawyers nor the companies involved have commented further.
