CLARIFICATION (!!) re "The decision"On Friday I posted "The decision" here--which was my take on the CAFC decision from earlier that morning.
https://stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard/t.qtrh/quarterhill-inc?postid=34398980
It has currently had 525 reads, so, quite a bit of attention. And it was quite negative in its interpretation.
I looked at the CAFC decision again today and realized my Friday comment involved a small but crucial misreading of the decision. Please bear with me. This is really important.
The judges used Skippen's wheat vs. chaff metaphor in looking at earlier Wilan-granted licences that included the '145 and '757 patents. What they found was that within those licences, that included MANY patents, the '145 and '757 could be seen as falling within the "chaff" portion of those licences (as opposed to the "wheat" portion). So the 145/757 patents could be seen as relatively less important (within the entire licence) than some other patents (within the entire licence). Not wonderful for a Quarterhill shareholder to hear, but hardly a disaster.
From page 19 of the decision:
More importantly, those licenses treated
the asserted patents as chaff, not wheat.
It's sort of like the judges are saying: "here are 20 patents that make up a licence; Wilan claims the '145 and '757 are the most important among them but the evidence indicates that, as the licence was written, they do not appear to stand out."
Hence they were treated by the licence as chaff, not wheat. (Stick with that wording.)
BUT I mistakenly read this passage (and a few others) as the CAFC saying that the '145 and '757 parents ARE chaff.
The difference is crucial.
In the CAFC's careful wording the 145/757 get less of the spotlight than some other patents within several licences (from years ago).
But in my mistaken reading I took the CAFC to be saying that the '145 and '757 ARE chaff. This would be like the CAFC saying that those patents are pretty much worthless garbage.
And that's how I mistakenly read it. A thousand apologies. (You can see how it's an easy mistake to make.)
My conclusion, needless to say, was not a happy one. I imagined Apple going on and on in the next courtroom saying that the '145 and '757 were chaff (or garbage) because the CAFC said they were.
But that is not what the CAFC actually said. Anywhere.
I am now much more fully in agreement with Friday's press release--in terms of both its tone and content.