Untitled case

I'll research this case to build a verified overview.

Case Overview — Fed. Cir. No. 2014-1410 (US 5,870,087)

Bottom line up front: The appeal number resolves to LSI Corporation v. International Trade Commission, a § 337 appeal from the ITC (the Federal Circuit's own docket page lists "2014-1410: LSI Corporation v. ITC," and commentary identifies 2014-1410 as an LSI v. ITC order on the preclusive effect of ITC patent rulings). The tie between 2014-1410 and U.S. Patent 5,870,087 comes from Google Patents' family-litigation listing, which I could not independently corroborate in the sources I retrieved — treat the patent-to-appeal linkage as probable but unconfirmed. I flag at the end exactly what remains unverified.

Parties and their roles

The appellant, LSI Corporation, was at the relevant time an operating semiconductor company (storage/networking and consumer-media silicon), not a litigation-only entity — it acquired Agere Systems in 2007, and the MPEG decoder patent family at issue traces to that Lucent/Agere lineage. The appellee is the U.S. International Trade Commission, the respondent in every § 337 appeal; the real adversaries below were the respondent device makers and chip suppliers named in the investigation. Importantly, the '087 patent's ownership history runs through operating-company hands rather than a classic PAE: per the 2017 IPR petition, the patent stood assigned to Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., the licensing/IP-holding vehicle of Avago (which acquired LSI in 2015 and took the Broadcom name in 2016). So this is an operating-company portfolio assertion in a trade forum, later recycled into the Broadcom/Avago-side campaign — not an NPE suit. One caution: a search hit styling the plaintiff "Invertery"/INVT SPE asserting a "'587 Patent" is a different patent (Panasonic-derived SEPs asserted against Apple in D.N.J.); it is not this patent and should not be conflated with it.

The technology and the patent

U.S. 5,870,087 — "MPEG Decoder System And Method Having A Unified Memory For Transport Decode And System Controller Functions" — inventor Kwok Kit Chau, filed Nov. 13, 1996, issued Feb. 9, 1999. Technically, it claims an MPEG-2/H.262 decoder architecture in which the transport-stream decode path (packet demux, PES parsing) and the host/system controller share a single unified memory (UMA-style) rather than separate dedicated buffers — a cost-reduction architecture for set-top boxes, TVs, DVD players and the decoder chipsets inside them. The accused technology in the ITC matter was therefore MPEG-2 video-decoding silicon and the consumer audiovisual products containing it; the specific respondent list and accused-product schedule are items I could not confirm from the retrieved sources and should be pulled from the ITC EDIS record for the investigation (see caveats).

Procedural posture and why the forum matters

The underlying proceeding was a § 337 investigation at the ITC, not a district court case — meaning no jury, no damages, and a remedy set of exclusion orders and cease-and-desist orders, with appeal as of right exclusively to the Federal Circuit (28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1); 19 U.S.C. § 1337(c)). That posture is the whole point of the case's citation life: the Federal Circuit's order in 2014-1410 is cited for the settled rule that ITC patent determinations have no preclusive effect in district court, a holding with direct strategic consequences for parallel ITC-plus-district-court campaigns (a defendant's ITC non-infringement win does not end the district case, and vice versa). Reported as a non-precedential order dated March 20, 2015; the court's site also hosts oral-argument audio for the appeal. Note a date inconsistency I could not reconcile: the argument-audio posting is dated July 20, 2015, which post-dates the reported March 2015 order — verify the disposition date against the Federal Circuit docket before relying on it.

Why it's notable

Three reasons. First, doctrinally, it sits in the line of authority on the non-preclusive effect of ITC decisions — an issue that resurfaces every time a complainant runs ITC and district actions on the same patent. Second, structurally, it illustrates how operating-company MPEG/consumer-media portfolios migrated through consolidation (Agere → LSI → Avago → Broadcom) and then into assertion programs: the same '087 patent reappears in IPR2017-01816, filed July 18, 2017, with a petition exhibit set that includes the claim construction order (D.I. 150) from Broadcom Corp. v. Sony Corp., No. 8:16-cv-01052 (C.D. Cal.) — i.e., the patent was being asserted against Sony in the Central District of California roughly two years after the ITC appeal. Third, market-wise, unified-memory MPEG decoder architectures were the cost battleground of the late-1990s/2000s digital-TV and set-top boom, which is why a 1999 patent remained assertable against device makers nearly two decades later.

Verification status — read before citing

• Verified: '087 title, inventor, filing/issue dates, and Avago assignment (IPR2017-01816 petition, filed 7/18/2017); existence and caption of Fed. Cir. 2014-1410 as LSI Corp. v. ITC (cafc.uscourts.gov docket page); the preclusion holding and March 20, 2015 non-precedential order (secondary commentary); the Broadcom v. Sony C.D. Cal. claim construction order cited in the IPR.
• Not verified / do not repeat as fact without checking: that 2014-1410 actually involved the '087 patent (Google Patents listing only); the ITC investigation number and ALJ; the respondent parties and accused products; the dispositional outcome of 2014-1410 and the outcome of IPR2017-01816 (institution, final written decision, any appeal). Recommended primary sources: the Federal Circuit docket for 2014-1410, ITC EDIS for the underlying 337 investigation, and PTAB Endpoint/PACER for IPR2017-018

I'll research this case systematically. Let me start with parallel searches on the docket number and the patent.

The patent is LSI's MPEG decoder patent. Federal Circuit No. 2014-1410 appears to be the appeal from ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-837. Let me confirm and dig into the docket.

Key finding: No. 2014-1410 is the Federal Circuit appeal of ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-837. Let me verify the appeal details and identify the parallel district court and PTAB proceedings on the '087 patent.

Correction to the case metadata (important)

The docket No. 2014-1410 (Fed. Cir.) is not a district-court patent case and it is not an appeal about the '087 patent. It is LSI Corp. v. International Trade Commission, 604 F. App'x 924 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2015) (nonprecedential), the appeal from ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-837, Certain Audiovisual Components and Products Containing the Same. The '087 patent was one of four patents asserted in that investigation, but the '087 (and '663) portion was settled and terminated in January–March 2014, so the '087 patent was never before the Federal Circuit. Google Patents' family-litigation list links 14-1410 to the '087 patent only because the patent was asserted in the underlying investigation — a linkage that is now verified, but which does not mean the appeal decided anything about the '087 patent's claims.

Because this is a § 337 track, several items in your template (answer/counterclaims, Markman, SJ, JMOL, verdict, fees) map onto ITC equivalents rather than district-court events. A separate district-court track on the '087 patent existed later (see §7).

---

1. Filing and initial pleadings

Respondents: Funai Electric Co., Ltd.; Funai Corp., Inc.; P&F USA, Inc.; Funai Service Corp. (collectively "Funai"); Realtek Semiconductor Corp.; MediaTek Inc., MediaTek USA Inc., MediaTek Wireless, Inc.; Ralink Technology Corp. Presiding ALJ: David P. Shaw. No OUII staff attorney participated. 77 FR 22803

• Responses: due within 20 days of service of the amended complaint/NOI (per 19 C.F.R. § 210.13); the specific filing dates were not retrievable from public sources.
• Counterclaims: not applicable — the ITC has no jurisdiction over declaratory-judgment counterclaims; respondents' affirmative defenses instead included invalidity, non-infringement, FRAND/RAND breach and estoppel (Agere's 2003–04 IEEE assurances on 802.11 standard-essential patents), inequitable conduct, and patent misuse. Funai's and Realtek's RAND defenses were fully litigated at the ALJ level and rejected.
• Claim/respondent narrowing: claims of the '958, '867 and '663 patents were terminated during the investigation, and the allegations against MediaTek/Ralink were withdrawn on joint motion.

2. Pre-hearing motions of substance

• ALJ claim construction order preceded the hearing; the ALJ construed "single memory," "memory," and "first unified memory" in a manner broad enough to cover the two separate DRAMs in Funai's accused products. (The Commission later asked the parties specifically for "evidence in the record [that] supports or does not support the conclusion that the two DRAMs in each of the Funai products accused of infringing the '087 patent is a single memory having one or more memory chips." 78 FR (Notice of Commission Determination to Review, 2013-10-23).) "Operable to access the memory" was given its plain and ordinary meaning.
• Summary determination practice replaced summary judgment; the only publicly salient summary determinations were the terminations/withdrawals noted above.
• No stay pending IPR was sought or granted — the '087 IPRs came years later (see §6).

3. Trial (evidentiary hearing) and the ALJ's final initial determination

• ALJ Final Initial Determination: 2013-07-18; Recommended Determination on remedy/bonding: 2013-07-31.
• On the '087 patent, the ALJ found a violation of § 337 as to claims 1, 5, 7-11, 16: Funai's accused products directly infringed claims 1, 5, 7-9 and 16, and Funai induced infringement of method claims 10 and 11.
• The ALJ found no violation as to any asserted claim of the '958, '867 and '663 patents.
• The ALJ found the asserted claims not shown invalid, the domestic-industry requirement satisfied as to all four patents, and rejected respondents' equitable/RAND defenses.
• The RD recommended a limited exclusion order against Funai and related relief — the '087 patent being the only patent on which a violation rested. (79 FR 13363; ITC EDIS record for 337-TA-837)

4. Commission review and the '087 settlement

• 2013-08-05 — LSI and Funai petition for review; Realtek files a contingent petition; responses 2013-08-13.
• 2013-10-17 — Commission determines

I'll research this appeal and its underlying litigation.

Bottom line

"14-1410" is LSI Corp. v. U.S. International Trade Commission, No. 2014-1410 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2015), 604 F. App'x 924 (nonprecedential) (Taranto, Mayer, Hughes). The "plaintiffs" are the complainants/appellants LSI Corporation (Milpitas, CA) and Agere Systems LLC (Allentown, PA) — the same two entities that filed the ITC complaint and the companion C.D. Cal. suit.

Two important corrections to the existing summary:

• The '087 patent was not actually litigated on appeal. Inv. No. 337-TA-837 asserted the '087, '958, '867 and '663 patents, but on Jan. 17, 2014 LSI and Funai jointly moved to partially terminate as to the '087 and '663 patents based on a settlement, which the Commission granted in its March 26, 2014 final determination. The appeal to 14-1410 concerned only the '958 patent (domestic industry under § 1337(a)(3)(C)) and vacatur as to the expired '867 patent. So the Google Patents linkage to '087 is real at the investigation level but not at the appeal level — the '087 claims were gone before the Federal Circuit saw the case.
• The caption in the Federal Circuit is LSI Corporation, Agere Systems LLC v. ITC (Casetext/CourtListener list the full title this way), not just "LSI Corporation v. ITC."

Counsel of record for the plaintiffs/complainants

Context on the same plaintiff group and the same patent: Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP (Denver) also represented the patent owner — by then Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., which acquired LSI in 2014 — as Patent Owner in IPR2016-00646 (ASUSTek/ASUS v. Avago, instituted Aug. 22, 2016, terminated by settlement May 16, 2017) and in IPR2017-00520 (Sony v. Chau/Avago, terminated June 22, 2017), both on the '087 patent. Petitioner-side counsel in IPR2016-00646 was Alston & Bird LLP. So the '087 patent's post-2014 defense work sat with the same Kilpatrick team that had prosecuted the LSI enforcement campaign.

What I could not verify (and would not guess at)

1. Federal Circuit merits counsel for 14-1410. I retrieved the opinion PDF, the CourtListener/Casetext versions, and the CAFC oral-argument audio page, but not the docket's appearance forms or the counsel block on LSI's opening/reply briefs. I therefore cannot name appellate counsel of record. Practically, in this period LSI's ITC appeals were handled by the same § 337 boutique that tried the investigation, but I have no primary source in hand and will not assert it. To close this: pull the Fed. Cir. docket for 2014-1410 (ECF docket via PACER) and the "Certificate of Interest"/counsel block on LSI's opening brief (Feb.–Mar. 2014), or the Rule 26.1/ECF appearance forms.
2. The ITC counsel attribution for Mr. Nickel rests on a secondary compilation (Taiwan STPI's case table for 337-TA-837 listing "原告訴訟代理人 David F. Nickel (Foster, Murphy, Altman & Nickel, PC)"), not the Commission's EDIS docket or the complaint's signature block.
3. In-house counsel. No LSI/Agere in-house attorney is identified in anything I retrieved; nothing suggests in-house counsel entered an appearance.
4. No sealing issue is implicated for the appearances themselves — the ITC record and the N.D. Cal./C.D. Cal. filings are public. Confidential business information in 337-TA-837 was handled by protective order rather than by sealing the parties' counsel of record.

Suggested verification steps

• Fed. Cir. docket 2014-1410 (PACER / CourtListener RECAP) → appearance forms and brief counsel blocks; the opinion is at cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/14-1410.Opinion.3-18-2015.1.PDF.
• ITC EDIS, Inv. No. 337-TA-837 → complaint and amended complaint signature blocks; Commission final determination, 79 Fed. Reg. (Mar. 10, 2014) (terminating '087/'663 on settlement, no position on '867, no violation on '958).
• C.D. Cal. No. 2:12-cv-02047 (LSI Corp. v. Funai Elec. Co.) → the original infringement complaint naming the '087 patent; I did not retrieve this docket and cannot confirm which Kilpatrick attorneys (or others) signed it, though the same plaintiff group used the Kilpatrick Denver/San Francisco team in the later N.D. Cal. refiling.

I'll research this case carefully, starting with the Federal Circuit docket and the patent.

Let me look for the specific Federal Circuit docket 14-1410.

The case is LSI Corp. v. ITC, No. 2014-1410 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2015). Now let me verify counsel details and roles.

Step 1 — Identify the case and the correct party alignment

Metadata check first, because it changes the answer materially.

Two corrections to the case framing, which matter for your question:

1. This is not a district-court infringement suit. No. 2014-1410 is an appeal from a Section 337 ITC determination, so the "defendants" are the ITC respondents, appearing in the Federal Circuit as intervenors: the four Funai entities and Realtek.
2. The '087 patent (5,870,087) was not before the court on appeal. The '087 and '663 patents were the subject of a January 17, 2014 joint motion to partially terminate based on a Funai–LSI settlement, granted by the Commission (79 Fed. Reg. ___ ; see 2014-05134, Mar. 10, 2014). The appeal addressed only the '958 and '867 patents. The Google Patents family-litigation linkage of No. 14-1410 to US 5,870,087 is therefore a family/investigation-level link, not an appeal-level one — accurate only because the '087 patent was one of the four patents in 337-TA-837.

So the attorneys below are the counsel of record for the Funai respondents and Realtek in No. 2014-1410.

---

Step 2 — Counsel of record for the defendant-respondents (from the opinion's counsel block)

The Federal Circuit opinion lists appearances as follows (604 F. App'x at 924):

Funai entities (Funai Electric Co., Ltd.; Funai Corporation, Inc.; P&F USA, Inc.; Funai Service Corp.)

Realtek Semiconductor Corporation

For completeness — opposing and government counsel (not defendants)

• LSI/Agere (appellants): David E. Sipiora (argued), Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, Denver, CO; Matthew Christian Holohan; David Franklin Nickel, Foster, Murphy, Altman & Nickel, PC, Washington, DC.
• ITC (appellee): Cathy Chen (argued), Dominic L. Bianchi, Wayne W. Herrington, Office of the General Counsel, Washington, DC.

---

Step 3 — What I could not verify (stated explicitly)

• PACER docket sheet for 14-1410 was not retrieved. No docket-entry numbers, appearance dates, or Docketing Statement/Entry of Appearance filings can be cited. The counsel list above is taken from the published opinion's counsel block, which reflects the appearances of record at decision — a reliable but not exhaustive source. Additional attorneys may have entered and withdrawn without appearing on the opinion, and I will not name any such attorney without support.
• Trial-level (ITC) counsel for the respondents is only partially sourced. A secondary compilation (Taiwan TIPO/STPI report on 337-TA-837) lists Elizabeth A. Niemeyer (Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP) as respondents' counsel and David F. Nickel (Foster, Murphy, Altman & Nickel) for complainants. That source is a government research digest, not a docket, and it does not tie Ms. Niemeyer to a specific respondent — treat it as unverified and confirm against EDIS/PACER before relying on it. My search budget ran out before I could check EDIS directly.
• Steven Baik's biography and practice history were not independently confirmed (no firm-page or docket corroboration retrieved). He is confirmed as Realtek's Federal Circuit counsel only via the opinion.
• Nothing was sealed in the Federal Circuit appeal itself; the ITC record below contained substantial confidential material (public versions are heavily redacted), but that does not affect identification of counsel.
• No local counsel designations apply: the Federal Circuit has no local-counsel requirement, so none appear.
• Parallel PTAB proceedings on the '087 patent (IPR2016-00646, ASUSTek v. Avago, instituted and terminated by settlement in 2017; Sony's later petition; Alston & Bird for petitioners, Kilpatrick Townsend for Avago) involve different parties and different counsel and are not relevant to who represented the defendants here.