OpenSky – Director Finds Abuse Of Process

In OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, Katherine Vidal, issued a precedential decision regarding OpenSky's violation of the Director's express order and ultimately issued sanctions limiting OpenSky's ability to participate in the IPR. The Director concluded that OpenSky "engaged in discovery misconduct by failing to comply" with orders for "interrogatories and Mandatory Discovery", and "abused the IPR process by filing the IPR "in an attempt to extract payment from VLSI [and Intel]." Id. at 2-3.

The underlying dispute in this IPR began when VLSI filed a "complaint against Intel for infringing the '759 patent, filed in the Waco Division of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on April 22, 2019." Id at 6. This trial ended in a "jury verdict finding that Intel neither literally nor willfully infringed the '759 patent, but did infringe claims 14, 17, 18, and 24 under the