Lemelson Bar Code Patents Too Late, Too Little and Now Unenforceable

In the appeal from the remand decision of the Nevada district court on the issue of prosecution laches, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the district court’s decision, holding the Lemelson patents unenforceable under the doctrine of prosecution laches. Symbol Technologies, Inc. v. Lemelson Foundation, LP, Case No. 04-1451 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 5, 2005) (Lourie, J.). This case, involving 14 patents relating to machine vision and automatic bar code identification technology, has been the subject of years of litigation and has generated more than $1 billion dollars in royalties and settlements. Its implications are likely to be far-reaching.

Symbol and its co-plaintiffs design, manufacture and sell bar code scanners and related machine vision products, including laser and charged coupled device (CCD) bar code readers. In 1998, Symbol’s customers began receiving letters from Lemelson stating that the use of the plaintiff’s products infringed various