The decision Just finished reading it and I have to concede that--even beyond the requirement that this go to a new damages trial--it looks more bad than good . . . maybe.
First off, some of it is good news.
(1) The court made it clear that there was infringement.
(2) Wilan prevailed on several technical points (see pages 8-12). Most central to this: the court rejected Apple's claim that "subscriber unit" and CPE are the same thing. (I'll leave it to the reader to dig into the significance of this.) This appears to me to amount to a win for Wilan on claim construction.
(3) The court agreed with Wilan that the Intel-manufactured chips (post-Wilan-Intel licence expiry (2017?)) should be included. And this was actually a reversal (in Wilan's favour) of the lower court's finding.
So it was by no means all bad.
The problems had to do with the arguments of Wilan's experts regarding the actual value of these patents. None of Skippen, Madisetti or Kennedy are looking good here. Indeed, to put it bluntly, they're all looking sort of like fools.
Skippen introduced an unfortunate metaphor (the wheat vs. the chaff) that the court really grabbed onto. In talking about earlier licence agreements that included more patents than the ones at issue here, the '145 and '757, Skippen characterized these two patents as the wheat in comparison to the chaff of most of the other patents listed in key earlier licences. The court, using Wilan's own materials, essentially turned that on its head, finding the '145 and '757 to be the chaff.
See pages 17-20. It does not make pleasant reading.
I don't think Wilan is going to be hiring Madisetti or Kennedy ever again. The company should ask for their money back from those guys.
So is the action dead? Not necessarily, but I think Wilan is going to have to put together a whole new theory of value. And Apple is going to make a lot of noise about the wheat and the chaff.
Apple's position is going to be: YES, there was infringement; YES, the Intel chips are included; YES, Wilan was right on claim construction; BUT, these are worthless patents.
The question is, can Wilan make a whole new value argument (possibly with new experts) while fending off all Apple's jibes about the wheat and the chaff?
That I don't know. I don't know if they can and--if they can--I don't know what it would look like.
I see the company's press release now. It's more positive in its tone than I would be inclined to adopt. I think it all depends on what kind of new value argument Wilan can make. If they CAN put together a new, strong value argument then I'd say the press release is likely reasonable.