Raytheon Company v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha et al.

I'll research this case thoroughly before writing the overview.

Let me dig deeper on the procedural history, the stay, dismissal, and the § 271(g) theory.

Let me pin down the docket events (stay, dismissal) and the accused products.

Case Overview and Background

Parties. The plaintiff, Raytheon Company, is a major U.S. defense and aerospace operating company — not an NPE or university. It came to the ’678 patent through corporate acquisition: the patent issued to Hughes Aircraft Company / HE Holdings, Inc., and Raytheon acquired the portfolio when it bought HE Holdings (a Hughes successor) in December 1997, so the ’678 patent is a legacy Hughes missile/space-electronics asset rather than a purpose-built assertion vehicle. The defendants are a supply-chain cross-section of the image-sensor and smartphone markets: the Sony family (Sony Kabushiki Kaisha, Sony Corporation of America, Sony Semiconductor, Sony EMCS, Sony Electronics, and the Sony Mobile Communications entities), Apple, Inc., and OmniVision Technologies, Inc. At the time (early 2015), Sony, Samsung, and OmniVision were the world's three largest image-sensor suppliers, and Apple was the principal downstream smartphone customer — the same market-position observation made in contemporaneous coverage of the filings (STPI/iKnow, Mar. 17, 2015).

Asserted patent and accused technology. Raytheon asserted a single method patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,591,678, titled "Process of manufacturing a microelectronic device using a removable support substrate and etch-stop" (filed June 7, 1995; priority Jan. 19, 1993; issued Jan. 7, 1997; inventors Bendik, Malloy & Finnila; 18 claims). In one line: it claims a fabrication method in which a circuit-bearing wafer is bonded to a second (handle) substrate and its original etchable layer is etched away down to an etch-stop layer, letting a device be moved between supports during fabrication, with back-side connections formed through the remaining substrate and layers stacked into 3-D devices. The accused products were image sensors (CCD/CMOS) manufactured abroad and the smartphones and cameras incorporating them. Critically, Raytheon pleaded infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(g), which reaches products made by a patented process outside the United States and then imported — so the theory was that the sensors were fabricated abroad using the claimed method and then imported into the U.S. (directly or inside finished phones), with Raytheon also alleging indirect and willful infringement. Because process steps occur off-shore and in defendants' fabs, Raytheon invoked the § 295 presumption of infringement on the theory that defendants would not disclose their manufacturing processes (per secondary coverage of the complaint).

Procedural posture and significance. The case was filed March 6, 2015 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas, assigned to Judge Rodney Gilstrap with Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne — the venue then synonymous with high-volume, plaintiff-friendly patent litigation and fast trial settings, which raised the settlement stakes for importers of foreign-made sensor products. Raytheon filed a companion case the same day against Samsung entities, No. 2:15-cv-00341, asserting the same patent. The defendants answered and counterclaimed in spring 2015 (see Dkts. 13, 21, 23), but the district court litigation was quickly overtaken by the PTAB: Sony and Samsung filed a coordinated series of IPR petitions (IPR2015-01201, IPR2016-00209, and joined IPR2016-00962), and the Board held all 18 claims unpatentable in final written decisions dated Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 4, 2017. The Federal Circuit affirmed on April 2, 2018 (Raytheon Co. v. Sony Corp., Nos. 2017-1554/-1556/-1557, nonprecedential), rejecting Raytheon's Liu inoperability, Bertin antedating, and claim-construction arguments. The district cases were stayed pending the IPRs and were ultimately dismissed in the same 2018 joint-dismissal episode as the companion Samsung action. The case is notable as a supply-chain / § 271(g) assertion by an operating company against the leading image-sensor makers and their biggest OEM customer, and as an example of parallel IPR linkage: the PTAB invalidation — not a jury — disposed of the litigation, illustrating how coordinated AIA post-grant proceedings allowed a vertically integrated defendant group to defeat a legacy process patent before trial.

Sourcing caveat: the party list, filing date, docket entries (e.g., Dkts. 1, 6–7, 13, 21, 23), the judge/magistrate assignment, the IPR numbers and final written decisions, and the Federal Circuit affirmance are well corroborated (PACER-derived dockets, PTAB final written decisions, and the Fed. Cir. opinion). The precise docket entry and date of the district-court dismissal order, the stay order, and the specific accused product model numbers could not be independently confirmed within this session and should be verified against the live E.D. Tex. docket before being quoted as fact; the specific "presumed infringement / non-disclosure" pleading characterization rests on secondary commentary, not the complaint text itself.

I'll research this case through multiple searches.

Let me dig into the docket specifics and the stay/dismissal events.

Let me find the full docket and the stay/dismissal orders.

Raytheon Co. v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha, et al., No. 2:15-cv-00342 (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div.)

Bottom line: This was a short-lived, IPR-killed case. Raytheon's sole asserted patent — U.S. 5,591,678 — was invalidated in parallel PTAB proceedings in November 2016, affirmed by the Federal Circuit in April 2018, and the district court case was stayed and then dismissed without ever reaching Markman, summary judgment, or trial.

Because the docket snapshot I could retrieve only exposed the 2015 pleadings window, I flag below where I am relying on the case metadata you supplied versus verified sources.

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The patent and the theory of the case

• U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,678, "Process of Manufacturing a Microelectronic Device Using a Removable Support Substrate and Etch-Stop," issued 1997-01-07; 18 claims (3 independent); priority to an application filed 1993-01-19; original assignee Hughes Aircraft Co., later HE Holdings, Inc.; acquired by Raytheon in the 1997 HE Holdings acquisition. The patent is directed to a "back-side" fabrication method for stacked/3-D microelectronic

I'll research press coverage of this case across several angles.

Let me search more specifically for press and blog coverage.

Press and analysis coverage: sparse

I ran searches on the case caption (Raytheon Company v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha, 2:15-cv-00342), the party names (Raytheon/Sony/Apple/OmniVision/Samsung), the asserted patent (U.S. 5,591,678), and the outcome angles (IPR, Federal Circuit affirmance, dismissal/settlement). I could not find any coverage of this case from the outlets you listed — no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, EFF Deeplinks, JD Supra, or mainstream/trade press article. Searches returned almost exclusively primary and database sources: the Justia and UniCourt dockets, the PTAB final written decisions (IPR2015-01201, IPR2016-00209/-00962), the Federal Circuit's nonprecedential opinion, and commercial litigation databases (Docket Alarm, RPX Empower, Patexia, GreyB/IPVerse, Casetext, CourtListener). Those are court records and database entries, not press reporting, so I am not treating them as coverage. Notably, the way this case ended — stayed pending the IPRs, then dismissed in the same mid-2018 joint-dismissal episode as the companion Samsung case — appears to have generated no press pickup at all, and I found no reporting of settlement terms or damages.

The one genuinely journalistic/trade write-up I located is a Taiwanese industry-analysis piece from the Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center's "iKnow" service (iKnow / STPI), published 2015-03-17, which reported on the filings directly. It stated that on 2015-03-06 Raytheon sued four Samsung entities in one E.D. Tex. action and, in a separate same-day action, Apple, OmniVision, and eight Sony entities — ten companies total — over image-sensor technology. It described the asserted patent as the method patent U.S. 5,591,678 ("Process of manufacturing a microelectronic device using a removable support substrate and etch-stop"), granted 1997-01-07, with 18 claims (three independent) and priority to 1993-01-19, tracing ownership from Hughes Aircraft to HE Holdings and then to Raytheon via its December 1997 acquisition of HE Holdings. The piece reported that Raytheon's theory was importation under § 271(g) of products made abroad by the patented process, that Raytheon argued the defendants' refusal to disclose their processes justified a presumption of infringement, and that Raytheon sought to have the cases consolidated.

Where that account goes beyond the bare court record is in editorial/analyst commentary: iKnow / STPI noted that Sony, Samsung, and OmniVision were the top three global image-sensor suppliers and were major iPhone component vendors, and speculated about Raytheon's motive — observing that Raytheon is itself an image-sensor maker and wondering whether the litigation was intended to expand its market share or gain entry into those supply chains. That is the outlet's inference, not a court finding, and I found no executive statements, analyst notes, or other outlets quoted on the case. One caveat on the divergence front: the later Federal Circuit decision in Raytheon Co. v. Sony Corp., 727 F. App'x 662 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 2, 2018), records that the district court actions were effectively superseded by the consolidated IPRs, in which the Board held all claims of the '678 patent unpatentable and the Federal Circuit affirmed — a procedural arc that, as far as my searches show, no press outlet covered.

Bottom line: this was a low-profile assertion that drew essentially no mainstream or trade-press attention, with the only case-specific reporting I could verify being the single 2015 iKnow/STPI industry analysis. Everything else I encountered was litigation-database or court-record material rather than journalism.

Sources

• Raytheon Company v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha et al
• Search court records on patent:(5591678)
• Raytheon Company v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al - This case was last updated from U
• Sony Corporation v. Raytheon Company > Summary
• Raytheon Company v. Sony Corporation – CourtListener.com - Combined Opinion
• Raytheon Co. v. Sony Corp. - From Casetext: Smarter Legal Research
• 影像感測器專利訴訟 Raytheon控告Samsung等多家廠商 - ︿Top
• Trials@uspto
• PUBLIC VERSION
• NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential
• Sony Corporation v. Raytheon Company - IPR2016-00209
• Raytheon Co. v. Sony Corp., 2017-1554 | Fed. Cir., Judgment, Law, casemine.com - Fed

I'll research Raytheon's counsel in this case.

Plaintiff's Counsel — Raytheon Co. v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha et al., No. 2:15-cv-00342 (E.D. Tex.)

Research status: NOT CONFIRMED. I hit the research step ceiling before I could identify and verify any attorney who appeared for Raytheon in this action. Rather than fill the gap by inference, I am reporting exactly what I did and did not establish, plus the specific docket entries that will resolve it.

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1. What I could not verify (and why)

2. One lead I checked and am disqualifying

A Patexia law-firm profile surfaced this case under Hunton Andrews Kurth (the post-2018 merger successor of Andrews Kurth LLP, Houston/Dallas) with a filing date of Mar. 6, 2015 and a party-type field reading "Counter Claimant, Defendant" — see Patexia firm profile. Because that entry describes a defendant/counterclaimant role, it cannot be treated as evidence of Raytheon's counsel; at most it indicates legacy Andrews Kurth appeared on the defense side (plausibly for the Sony or OmniVision entities). I am flagging this rather than listing it as plaintiff's counsel, since mis-attributing lead counsel is exactly the error to avoid here.

Similarly, the names that recur across retrieved filings — Melissa R. Smith (Gillam & Smith, Marshall), J. Mark Mann / G. Blake Thompson (Mann Tindel Thompson, Tyler), Roger D. Sanders / Elvin E. Smith III (Siebman Law, Sherman), and Carter Arnett PLLC (Dallas) — appear under headings such as "ATTORNEYS FOR DEFENDANT SONY CORPORATION." Those are consistent with the defense-side picture already in the "Defendant representatives" section, not with Raytheon.

3. Cross-reference / consistency check

No contradiction with the previously generated sections: the prior sections' counsel discussion is exclusively defense-side, and the earlier "Defendant representatives" section already flagged the Justia docket page as unreliable for per-party attribution. Nothing in this session's results corrects or conflicts with that caveat — it simply remains unresolved for the plaintiff's side. The case metadata (single plaintiff, Raytheon Company; dismissed 2018) is uncontradicted.

4. What will resolve this (concrete next steps)

1. Dkt. 1 (Complaint, filed 2015-03-06) — signature block identifies lead and local counsel for Raytheon; also check the civil cover sheet and any attachment listing lead counsel.
2. Notices of appearance and PHV motions in the first 60 days — the prior sections reference Dkts. 6–7, 13, 21, 23 as the spring-2015 pleading window; the plaintiff-side appearances will sit in that range.
3. Fed. Cir. No. 17-1554 docket and the opinion's counsel block — Raytheon was the appellee; the docketed appearances (compare the Sony-side entries of Feb. 17 and Feb. 27, 2017 already documented) will list Raytheon's appellate team, which typically overlaps trial counsel.
4. PTAB IPR2015-01201 / IPR2016-00209 / IPR2016-00962 — Raytheon's patent-owner counsel of record in the IPRs is public in PTABCTS and is a strong (though not conclusive) indicator of the litigation team.
5. Companion case No. 2:15-cv-00341 (Raytheon v. Samsung) — same-day, same patent, almost certainly same plaintiff's counsel; that docket is far more heavily populated (100+ entries through 2016 per Plainsite) and may yield the names faster.

Bottom line: I will not name Raytheon's counsel on this record. The honest answer as of this session is that the plaintiff-side appearances were not captured, and the section should be completed from Dkt. 1's signature block and the plaintiff-side notices of appearance on the live E.D. Tex. docket (or the free Plainsite/Justia/RECAP mirrors) before publication.

I'll research the counsel of record for the defendants in this case.

Let me pull the full docket and identify which attorney represents which defendant.

Let me try to access the actual docket sheet and related filings.

I hit the research step limit before I could exhaustively confirm every name, so I'm going to give you what is actually sourced from the retrieved records, and be explicit about what I could not confirm. I did not have direct PACER access in this session; my findings rest on (a) the PACER-derived Justia docket page for No. 2:15-cv-00342, (b) the Federal Circuit docket for the appeal (No. 17-1554), and (c) PTAB filings.

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Counsel of Record for Defendants — Raytheon Co. v. Sony Kabushiki Kaisha et al., No. 2:15-cv-00342 (E.D. Tex.)

Framing / scope caveat

The direct docket-sheet page I could retrieve is the PACER-derived Justia entry (dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/2:2015cv00342/157969). Justia aggregates a party's "Represented By" list on a single case page without reliably separating which attorney represents which party, and it mixes plaintiff- and defendant-side counsel. It also lists attorneys who appeared at any point, including those later terminated. So the names below are grouped by the strength of the source, not by assumption.

1. Sony-side counsel — best sourced

Important sourcing note: the four appellate entries are confirmed as Sony Corporation counsel; the district-court appearance I can positively tie to a specific Sony entity is T. Cy Walker's Dkt. 19. I could not verify the law firm for any of these Sony-side attorneys from the records retrieved, so I am deliberately not naming firms for them. (Do not treat my inability to name the firm as evidence of in-house status — it is simply unverified.)

2. Texas counsel appearing on the district docket — attribution uncertain