Comcast’s 3rd Amended Complaint Seeks to ‘Game the Judicial System’: MaxLinear
Like those before it, Comcast’s third amended complaint “is one in search of a claim,” said MaxLinear’s memorandum of law Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-04436) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of its motion to dismiss.…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The dispute began nearly a year ago when Comcast alleged that chipmaker MaxLinear breached its “contractual obligations” to support millions of the cable company's broadband gateways (see 2305300045). Comcast’s “latest set of grievances” concerns two related contracts, though it doesn’t allege “any actionable harm arising from those contracts,” said MaxLinear’s memorandum. In its latest “mulligan,” Comcast asks the court to declare, even though it faces no threat of harm, that the contracts remain in effect. But without any threat of harm from MaxLinear, those declaratory judgment claims “seek an improper advisory opinion,” it said. Comcast’s “tag-along claims” for indemnification and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing are “insufficiently pled and meritless,” said the memorandum. In reality, Comcast brings this suit to “retaliate” against MaxLinear for its assignment of certain patents to another entity, Entropic, which is now suing Comcast for willful patent infringement in the Central District of California, it said. Comcast doesn’t claim that MaxLinear should never have assigned the patents to Entropic, nor could it, as neither contract bars patent assignments, it said. Comcast’s gripe is that one of the contracts contains a covenant that it contends bars Entropic’s lawsuit, it said. But the California court has already ruled that the covenant permits claims of willful patent infringement, which Entropic is pursuing, and has ordered Comcast to produce discovery relevant to willful infringement, it said. There’s thus nothing for this court to address, said the memorandum. Comcast’s lawsuit is “a thinly veiled attempt to game the judicial system, obtain potentially conflicting rulings, and waste the time and resources” of the court and the parties, it said. The court should dismiss Comcast’s third amended complaint with prejudice, it said.