PORTLAND, Maine — As Maine mapmaker DeLorme gets courted by GPS giant Garmin, some of the world’s largest electronics companies have taken its side in court over a patent infringement battle with trade regulators.
Dell, HTC, HP, Vizio, QVC and others have written to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in support of a new hearing for DeLorme in the case that led to a $6.2 million patent infringement penalty from the U.S. International Trade Commission.
A panel of three judges at the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit in November 2015 upheld the $6.2 million penalty against DeLorme, despite also upholding a lower court’s invalidation of the patent that was the basis of the penalty.
“What is the public policy behind this, that you would go after an American company building products in America that do not infringe any valid patent?” Peter Brann, the attorney representing DeLorme, said in a telephone interview. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
