When inventor Lakshmi Arunachalam gets involved in patent cases, strange things can happen. But one of her latest cases quietly cleared a hurdle this week, leaving JPMorgan Chase & Co. facing claims that it infringed patents by letting its customers pay bills online.
In a summary judgment order issued on April 7, U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Delaware refused to gut a patent infringement case Arunachalam’s company Pi-Net International Inc. brought against JPMorgan in 2012. The bank’s lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom tried to invalidate the vast majority of the patent claims at issue on indefiniteness grounds, but Andrews ruled that Skadden didn’t present the sort of clear and convincing evidence required to pull it off.
