Plaintiff WSOU Investments, LLC, also known as Brazos Licensing and Development, filed a complaint for patent infringement against Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft allegedly infringed upon U.S. Patent No. 8,274,902 (the ’902 Patent), entitled “Estimation Method for Loss Rates in a Packetized Network.” Microsoft’s allegedly infringing product is Azure, its cloud computing service, and its Network Performance Monitor.
WSOU claimed that Microsoft has infringed because “Microsoft makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, and/or distributes…network monitoring products, including Network Performance Monitor (NPM) in Azure (collectively, the ‘Accused Products’).” They stated that the “Accused Products offer a variety of solutions to monitor networking assets in Azure and in hybrid environments comprising Azure and on-premise equipment. The accused products can “monitor network connectivity across cloud deployments and on-premises locations, multiple data centers, etc. and can determine the infrastructure in the path, such as intermediate branching nodes and response time of the service.”
Further, because the “Accused Products are a cloud-based platform,” they “act as a collection point to collect the performance data to show network connectivity and report data to the user.” These processes allegedly infringed on the patented technology in the ’902 patent. As a result of these capabilities and processes, which is described in the ’902 patent, the plaintiff stated that Microsoft has infringed upon its patent.
WSOU stated that the aforementioned products infringe on at least claim 1 of the ’902 patent. Microsoft is accused of directly infringing and inducing infringement of the Accused Products. WSOU asserted that Microsoft has been notified of its infringement, but continues to infringe despite this knowledge. They also pointed to Microsoft’s advertising, product description, and manuals to highlight this alleged infringement. Lastly, plaintiff notes that the “Accused Products are especially made or adapted for infringing the ’902 Patent and have no substantial non-infringing use.”
The plaintiff has sought declaratory judgment in its favor, an award for damages, to declare this case exceptional, and an award for costs and fees.
The suit is filed in the Western District of Texas. Plaintiff is represented by the Etheridge Law Group, PLLC.
