Federal Circuit Affirms Invalidity Ruling against Golden Bridge’s CDMA Mobile Communication Scheme Patent

Holding:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that Golden Bridge’s CDMA mobile communication scheme patent was invalid for being anticipated by prior art. In this appeal, Golden Bridge asserted that the prior art known as Hakkinen reference did not disclose a claimed synchronization element. It however admitted that this factual contention was an entirely new argument raised for the first time on appeal and was never presented to the district court. In dismissing Golden Bridge's appeal, the Federal Circuit declared that Golden Bridge had multiple opportunities to present this argument. Hence, any appeal on the synchronization issue had been waived. In this regard, the Federal Circuit rejected Golden Bridge’s argument that it be given an opportunity to assert a new issue on appeal since it had hired a new counsel. According to the Federal Circuit, to give due course to Golden Bridge's assertions would open the door to every litigant who was unsuccessful at the district court to simply hire new counsel and then argue he should be allowed to raise new issues on appeal. Having a new appellate counsel does not present an exceptional case or circumstance in which declining review will result in injustice.

Detailed Summary:

The patent at issue (“’267 patent”) related to a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile communication scheme that gradually ramps-up the communication power signal in order to avoid interference with other mobile phones. The mobile communication system described in the ’267 patent employed a CDMA scheme, where multiple mobile phones communicate at the same time with the same base station over the same frequency range by using different numerical “spreading codes” in their transmissions.

After plaintiff-appellant Golden Bridge Technology, Inc. (“Golden Bridge”) instituted suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against defendant-appellee Lucent, Inc. (“Lucent”), the…

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