Opinion ID: 4199980
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: SynQor’s 2007 Lawsuit

Text: In 2007, SynQor sued certain of its major competi- tors—but not Vicor—for infringing five of its patents, including the ’021 patent and a related patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,072,190 (the ’190 patent). 3 All of the asserted patents involved IBA, with its separate isolation and regulation stages. In 2010, a jury found all asserted claims not invalid and infringed. The defendants appealed, arguing that, inter alia, there was no substantial evidence to support the jury’s nonobviousness verdict. SynQor, Inc. v. Artesyn Techs., Inc., 709 F.3d 1365, 1372, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (SynQor I). We rejected defendants’ arguments and affirmed because, inter alia, SynQor had “introduced extensive objective evidence of nonobviousness at trial, including commercial success, industry recognition, initial (pre-invention) skepticism of experts, 3 The SynQor Patents trace priority back to the ’190 patent. 10 VICOR CORP. v. SYNQOR, INC. unexpected results, and copying by competitors.” Id. at 1377. 4 In so holding, we linked this evidence to the IBA two-stage architecture as claimed in the patents: The record links this convincing evidence to the claimed invention thus supplying a nexus to the claimed intermediate bus architecture. For ex- ample, the record shows that even Defendants’ engineers were highly skeptical of the claimed invention, at one point describing it as a “whopper in terms of technical challenge.” Another engi- neer stated “that separating isolation from regulation . . . almost surely would cost more in dollars, efficiency, and board space.” Further, Defendants’ expert McAlexander admitted that “there is cer- tainly an element of commercial success [to SynQor’s] architecture,” and SynQor’s expert, Dr. Leeb, testified that “there were significant efforts [by Defendants] to copy . . . SynQor’s products.” Id.