Oral Arguments from the U.S. Court of Appeals

Case Summary:

NimbeLink Corp., a subsidiary of Airgain that develops Skywire cellular modem technology, sued Digi International Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota alleging that certain Digi Internet of Things connectivity products infringed two NimbeLink patents related to its Skywire cellular modems, U.S. Patent Nos. 9,497,570 and 9,838,066. In a lawsuit filed in September 2022, NimbeLink asserted these patent claims and also brought contract-based claims, but the district court later dismissed the contract claims and, on March 14, 2024, issued a ruling finding all of NimbeLink’s asserted patent claims invalid, prompting NimbeLink to appeal that patent judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the case captioned NimbeLink Corp. v. Digi International Inc., No. 24-2292, where oral argument has been heard.

Case Summary:

Marcus L. Swearengen was a civilian Electronics Mechanic Leader for the Department of the Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, who was removed from his position based on two agency charges: making inappropriate remarks to a coworker and creating a disruption in the workplace during a loud verbal exchange in the shop bay that other employees could hear. He appealed his removal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, where an administrative judge initially sustained both charges and the penalty of removal, and the full Board later modified that outcome by finding the “inappropriate remarks” charge unproven while still sustaining the “creating a disruption in the workplace” charge and upholding his removal, after which Swearengen petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for review.

Case Summary:

Netflix, Inc. petitioned for inter partes review of DivX, LLC’s patents relating to streaming video technology, including features such as trick‑play functionality (fast‑forward, rewind, and scene skipping) and handling encrypted multimedia content on playback devices. In IPR proceedings, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected Netflix’s invalidity challenges, finding, among other things, that Netflix had not adequately shown certain prior‑art references were analogous and that Netflix failed to carry its burden on key claim‑construction and obviousness arguments, prompting Netflix to appeal those PTAB decisions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Netflix, Inc. v. DivX, LLC, No. 24‑1541, where the January 12, 2026 oral argument concerns whether the Board erred in its treatment of Netflix’s theories and the scope of the relevant prior art.

Case Summary:

IPA Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of WiLAN that licenses patents originally developed at SRI International, sued Google LLC in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that Google’s virtual assistant technologies, such as Google Assistant, infringe several patents related to speech‑based control and intelligent personal assistant architectures. After the district court entered judgment in Google’s favor in this infringement dispute, IPA Technologies appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (No. 24‑1246), leading to the oral argument heard in IPA Technologies Inc. v. Google LLC.

Case Summary:

Gerald K. Kandel and a class of former employees brought a pay‑related class action against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims, ultimately securing two lump‑sum settlements approved by that court in 2020 and 2021 totaling just over $305,000 for the class. After those settlements, the plaintiffs moved under the Equal Access to Justice Act (28 U.S.C. § 2412(b)) to require the United States to pay additional money into the settlement fund to cover attorney fees, of‑counsel fees, and class administration costs, an amount they calculated at about $3.64 million. The Court of Federal Claims denied that motion, relying on the Federal Circuit’s Athey decision to hold that EAJA’s “common fund” doctrine does not make the government additionally liable for such fees and expenses. Kandel then appealed that post‑judgment fee ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals (No. 2024‑2193), where the case is captioned Kandel v. United States and oral argument has been heard.

Case Summary:

James E. Miller is a veteran who sought to obtain an earlier effective date for service-connected disability benefits for a heart disorder, based on VA proceedings that began in the 1970s. In 1978, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals considered his claim, and in 1980 the VA sent him a letter requesting new and material evidence relating to that decision. Years later, Miller argued that the earlier VA and Board actions concerning his heart condition should not be treated as final and that, at the time of those decisions, he had no access to judicial review of VA determinations.

Case Summary:

Q Technologies, Inc., a technology company that owns patents covering methods of sharing digital content using unique identifiers, sued Walmart, Inc. in the Western District of Texas for patent infringement based on patents including U.S. Patent Nos. 9,635,108, 10,567,473, and 10,594,774. Walmart moved for summary judgment, arguing that the asserted claims were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and the district court, applying the Alice framework, agreed that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of organizing and retrieving information by identifiers and lacked any inventive concept beyond routine computer implementation. After a final pretrial conference, the court orally granted Walmart’s motion, later issuing a written opinion that invalidated all asserted claims as patent-ineligible, entered summary judgment for Walmart, and effectively ended the district court case. Q Technologies then appealed that judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where the case is docketed as No. 24-1667 and oral argument audio has been made available under the title Q Technologies, Inc. v. Walmart, Inc.