Xerox filed a lawsuit against Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) on Thursday alleging the company has falsely accused it of infringing on patents. They claim the camera-related patents, initially acquired by the Eastman Kodak Company, were bought in 2017 by MPV with plans to stretch the scope of the patents to accuse Xerox’s printers of infringement. Xerox claims MPV asserted the patents and threatened litigation if Xerox did not pay for a license, Instead Xerox filed a lawsuit against MPV.
They claim in the complaint MPV is a “patent assertion entity” that “exists to acquire and then assert patents against companies who actually have done the hard work in researching, developing and bringing products and services to market.” They allege the business model of MPV is to buy cheap patents and use them on a wide array of targets to threaten litigation or require payments for licensing. The complaint argues MPV does not have a basis to seek damages in a legal case.
Xerox, represented by Barclay Damon, demands a jury trial on the issue, attorneys fees, and a judgment that they did not infringe any of the patents involved in the suit. The patents involved in the suit are related more closely to cameras than printers, and half of them are allegedly expired. Even if they were using technology in the unexpired patents, Xerox claims, infringement requires knowledge of the patent and of patent infringement which they did not have.
The patents involved in the suit include four expired patents, U.S. Patent No. 5,923,908, U.S. Patent No. 6,157,436, U.S. Patent No. 6,215,559, and U.S. Patent No. 6,396,599. U.S. Patent No. 6,873,336 requires placing images in a product which is something Xerox says their FreeFlow Core software product, which MPV alleges infringes this patent, does not have the ability to do. Xerox also claims its products do not have the controller required by the U.S. Patent No. 7,006,890, a database of searched images in U.S. Patent No. 7,092,966, or printer processor and display controller required in U.S. Patent No. 7,684,090.
