Last week the U.S. International Trade Commission issued the public version of its decision last December that no valid claim of Interdigital’s 3G patents was infringed by Huawei, Nokia or ZTE and reserving ruling on other issues, such as on RAND obligations (see our Dec. 23,2013 post). The ITC also gave its Federal Register notice of its decision earlier this month to grant InterDigital’s motion to voluntarily terminate the investigation against the remaining respondent LG to avoid simultaneously litigating that case in the ITC while InterDigital was appealing the decision as to the other respondents (see our Jan. 13, 2014 post about InterDigital’s voluntary termination after remand from Federal Circuit).
So we may not know for a year or more–pending InterDigital’s appeal–whether the SSO-obligation issues will be considered in this litigation. Those issues may be mooted if the Federal Circuit affirms the ITC’s ruling that no valid patent claim is infringed.