Princo Corporation and Princo America Corporation (collectively “Princo”) appeal from a final order of the United States International Trade Commission (“Commission”). The Commission found that compact discs imported by Princo infringed claims of six patents asserted by U.S. Philips Corporation (“Philips”) and rejected Princo’s patent misuse defense. In re Certain Recordable Compact Discs & Rewritable Compact Discs, No. 337-TA-474, slip op. at 9 (Int’l Trade Comm’n Feb. 5, 2007) (“Final Determination”), available at 2007 WL 1256290 (public version).
On appeal, Princo contends that the Commission erred by failing to find misuse with respect to two aspects of Philips’s licensing practices: first, that Philips conditioned the license of Philips patents essential to the production of Orange Book compliant recordable compact discs upon the purchase of a license to an allegedly-nonessential Sony patent (the Lagadec patent), and second, that Philips allegedly agreed with Sony not to license the Lagadec patent as competing technology to the Orange Book. We affirm the Commission’s rejection of Princo’s misuse argument based on the first practice; we vacate and remand for further proceedings with regard to the second.
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On appeal, Princo contends that the Commission erred by failing to find misuse with respect to two aspects of Philips’s licensing practices: first, that Philips conditioned the license of Philips patents essential to the production of Orange Book compliant recordable compact discs upon the purchase of a license to an allegedly-nonessential Sony patent (the Lagadec patent), and second, that Philips allegedly agreed with Sony not to license the Lagadec patent as competing technology to the Orange Book. We affirm the Commission’s rejection of Princo’s misuse argument based on the first practice; we vacate and remand for further proceedings with regard to the second.
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