December 24, 2009 - Last week, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that Verizon Wireless and other wireless carriers did not infringe the patent of DNT LLC, a unit of Acacia Research Corp.
The patent was filed in 1990 and relates to automatic dialing - specifically, an improved auto-dialer for touchtone phones. In this lawsuit, the patented technology was allegedly infringed by the way wireless modem cards access the carriers' networks.
The jury also found that the patent was invalid for three reasons: it lacked an adequate written description of the claimed invention, it was not enabling, and it would have been obvious as of the date of the patent application's filing.