In Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1 v. TCK Communication Technology, [2019-2215] (August 4, 2020), the Federal Circuit affirmed the jury determination of infringement based on patentee’s theory that (1) the patent claims are essential to mandatory aspects of the Long-Term Evolution (“LTE”) standard; and (2) the accused products practice that standard.

Defendant argued in a JMOL that the district court should have decided the question of the claims’ essentiality to the standard in the claim construction context and that the court needed to decide that question as a matter of law. The Federal Circuit found no error in the submission of these questions to the jury in the context of an infringement trial.

The Federal Circuit agreed that standard-essentiality is a question for the factfinder. The Federal Circuit added that determining standard-essentiality of patent claims during claim construction, moreover, hardly makes sense from a practical point of view. Essentiality is, after all, a fact question about whether the claim elements read onto mandatory portions of a standard that standard-compliant devices must incorporate. This inquiry is more akin to an infringement analysis (comparing claim elements to an accused product) than to a claim construction analysis (focusing, to a large degree, on intrinsic evidence and saying what the claims mean).