Stock market follows district court claim constructions

Kimberly Moore wrote In an empirical study of all claim construction decisions appealed to the Federal Circuit from 1996 through 2003, I found that district court claim constructions were reversed 35% of the time but the stock market still goes for the quick hit.

from the Houston Chronicle:

Shares of Tessera Technologies, which have traded between $24.70 and $45.98 over the last year, closed up $2.64, or 8.8 percent on March 24, 2006, at $32.74 on the Nasdaq.

The stock jump followed an optimistic note from Cowen analyst Raj Seth, who speculated the likelihood of Tessera winning its case against Micron and Infineon is strengthened based on recent claims construction in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

"No doubt claims construction is a critical step in a patent case because it defines the scope/boundaries of a patent . . . That the Texas court chose to stick largely with previous definitions would indicate to us that Tessera's patent claims are solid," Seth wrote in a note.

In March 2005, Tessera filed a patent infringement suit against Infineon and Micron, and amended its suit in April to include antitrust claims.

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Bringing this back to eBay v. MercExchange, Tessera co-authored an amicus brief in the case which argued that eBay’s brief wrongly characterizes the patent marketplace. eBay and its supporters contentions of a “broken patent system” is not supported by the evidence.

Not surprisingly, Micron co-authored a brief supporting eBay.

Thus, the briefs become merely another forum for arguing positions in separate, ongoing litigations. They are not so much a broad view on law or policy as they are self-interested positions in particular litigations.