King & Spalding Secures Dismissal for Delta Air Lines in Patent Litigation Against Non-Practicing Entity

King & Spalding successfully represented Delta Air Lines in a patent dispute with a non-practicing entity named Sound View Innovations. Sound View owns a patent portfolio originally developed by computer science researchers at Lucent Technologies. Sound View asserted several of those patents against Delta and other industry participants who have deployed certain open source technologies related to large-scale computing platforms. King & Spalding aggressively defended Delta’s interests – firmly establishing non-infringement and invalidity defenses, as well as developing an original inequitable conduct defense directed to one of Sound View’s most critical and important patents from the portfolio. In the end, the K&S team convinced Sound View that there was no reasonable infringement basis for each of the asserted patents, and that in all events Delta did not face any significant potential damages exposure. In a rare feat, Sound View agreed to walk away and dismiss the case with prejudice. This was a significant victory for Delta, as it was able to accomplish dismissal without a license while no other company was able to achieve that result.