IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Court affirms ITC holding that Centripetal Networks failed to establish 'technical prong' of 'domestic industry requirement' necessary for Section 337 violation, (Apr 24, 2026)

By Robert Margolis, J.D.

Court affirms ITC’s finding that product Centripetal asserted as practicing the patent-at-issue in the United States did not satisfy several of the patent’s claim limitations.

The domestic industry product that Centripetal Networks, LLC, asserted in its complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC) that Keysight Technologies, Inc. violated 19 U.S.C. § 1337b (Section 337) by importing infringing products does not satisfy the “technical prong” necessary to establish Section 337’s “domestic-industry requirement” because it does not meet the claim limitations in Centripetal’s asserted patent, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., has held. The court, in a nonprecedential decision, affirmed the ITC’s final determination of no Section 337 violation as to any of Centripetal’s asserted patent claims (Centripetal Networks, LLC v. ITC, No. 24-1416 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 23, 2026)).

’370 patent. Centripetal owns a Patent titled “Correlating Packets in Communication Networks,” which purports to address “a need for correlating packets in communications networks.” U.S. Patent No. 9,264,370 (the ’370 patent). Centripetal also owns two other related patents that were not at issue on this appeal.

As the ’370 patent explains, in prior art “[n]etwork devices located between endpoints may alter packet associated with a flow and in doing so may potentially obfuscate the flow with which a particular packet is associated from other network devices.” The ’370 patent purports to address the obfuscation problem “by [c]orrelating the packets transmitted by the network device by the packets received by the network device.” Claim 22, representative of the ’370 patent claims at issue, recites several limitations, several of which describe a “device.”

Products. In a complaint filed with the ITC, Centripetal alleges several versions of Keysight’s Vision products (the “accused products”) infringe the ’370 patent, in violation of Section 337. The accused products are network traffic monitoring and security enforcement computer equipment, and related software components, which allow users to monitor network traffic, filter packets based on different aspects of that traffic, and organize, analyze, and review data on the received packets. Centripetal asserted its CleanINTERNET solution as its domestic industry product (“DI product”) using the ’370 patent.

ITC decision. The ITC found no Section 337 violation for three reasons: (1) failure to establish the technical prong element of the domestic industry requirement; (2) the failure to show infringement; and (3) patent ineligibility. In affirming the ITC, the Federal Circuit agreed that Centripetal’s DI product failed to satisfy the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement. That alone was sufficient to affirm the ITC, without addressing the other two grounds on which the ITC relied (though the Federal Circuit also held that Centripetal had waived any challenge to the non-infringement finding).

Domestic industry requirement. Establishing a Section 337 violation requires a complainant to show: (1) the named respondents are importing articles that infringe a United States patent; and (2) there must already be an industry in the United States that relates to the articles that the patent protects. Lashify, Inc. v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 130 F.4th 948, 954 (Fed. Cir. 2025). The second element, commonly known as the “domestic industry requirement” itself has two requirements: (1) the “economic prong”; and (2) the “technical prong.” Id. The technical prong essentially means that the product the complainant asserts as being used in the United States actually practices the patent. The ITC had concluded that Centripetal failed to establish the “technical prong” because its DI products did not meet the claim 22 device limitations. The Federal Circuit agreed.

Centripetal argued, and proffered expert testimony, that within its DI products were devices that combined hardware and software. But the ITC had found that claim 22 requires that the devices be “provisioned with rules, identify packets, generate log entries, and communicate the log entries to the system.” Relying on testimony from Keysight’s expert, the ITC found that the DI products do not practice claim 22, because the ports posited as part of the “devices” were “simply electrical interfaces for connecting network cables” and cannot perform the required functions. The Federal Circuit was unconvinced by Centripetal’s expert testimony countering that position, and even if it found that evidence probative, affirmance was appropriate because substantial evidence supported the ITC’s conclusion, which is the standard for review for ITC factual determinations.

Waiver. Even if the Federal Circuit had found for Centripetal as to the domestic industry requirement, it still would have affirmed on Centripetal’s failure to show infringement. Centripetal was deemed to have waive multiple appeal-dispositive issue of infringement, by either failing to squarely address them or ignoring them entirely.

The Case is No. 24-1416.

Judge: Wallach, E.

Attorneys: Daniel J. Richardson (Sullivan & Cromwell LLP) for Centripetal Networks, LLC. Robert John Needham for the ITC.

Companies: Centripetal Networks, LLC

Cases: Patent FedCirNews