Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: High Court denies review of antitrust statute of limitations in patent licensing dispute, (Jan 20, 2015)

By Greg Hammond, J.D.

The U.S. Supreme Court has pulled the plug on Panasonic Corp.’s request to review the "continuing conspiracy" and "speculative damages" exception to the Clayton Act’s four-year statute of limitations, in an antitrust suit filed by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Panasonic was seeking review of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, reversing a district court’s dismissal of Samsung’s antitrust claims on statute of limitations grounds (Panasonic Corp. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Dkt. 14-540).

Samsung initially filed its action against Panasonic and other developers of SD technology, challenging licensing agreements for SD cards. SD cards are the dominant form of flash memory card on the market, and are widely used in cellular phones, digital cameras, audio players, and other forms of mobile electronics. The district court dismissed the claims as time-barred on the grounds that all events that took place within the four-years before Samsung’s 2010 suit were a mere continuation of the prior actions, and that the events did not restart the statute of limitations.

The Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, finding: (1) the adoption of a 2006 license, which extended an earlier license to cover second-generation SD cards, was a new and independent act that caused new and accumulating injury and (2) the case fell under the speculative damages exception to the statute of limitations because Samsung was unable to ascertain damages until the harm became apparent in 2006.

In its petition for certiorari, Panasonic asked the Supreme Court whether public standard-setting and patent-pool licensing agreements that long predate the Clayton Act’s four-year limitations period may indefinitely be subjected to antitrust challenge based on the defendants’ ongoing collection of royalties, where the plaintiff, a longtime licensee, delays filing suit to challenge those pre-limitations agreements until the market has come to depend upon the licensed technology.

Attorneys: Jeffrey L. Kessler (Winston & Strawn LLP) for Panasonic Corp. Kathleen M. Sullivan (Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP) for Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Companies: Panasonic Corp.; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

News: Antitrust