Zara RFID Partner Awarded $18.5 Million in Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Seattle-based RFID technology provider Impinj saw part of its legal battle finally come to an end after a California jury found NXP Semiconductors infringed upon two of the Zara technology partner’s patents, one of them intentionally. The jury empaneled by a federal court awarded Impinj $18.5 million in damages and lost profits on Friday.
“We were disheartened to see a large company copy the patented inventions of a small, innovative company like ours,” Impinj CEO Chris Diorio wrote in a letter to “partners and customers in the RAIN RFID community,” citing the more than 300 “issued and allowed” patents it holds in RAIN RFID. “We take our responsibility to protect our inventions seriously, which is why we felt we had no option but to pursue litigation.”
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Diorio, who help launched the company in 2000, also wrote that “upholding intellectual property rights will encourage more RAIN RFID providers to innovate in the future.”
The technology in question centers around RFID tagging technology which allows retailers to track the exact location of each item along the supply chain. Impinj said its Enduro technology “provides a robust IC-to-antenna connection, and power-harvesting circuitry, which improves RAIN RFID tag sensitivity.” These chips inserted within the RFID [Radio Frequency Identification] tags were among the intellectual property rights infringed upon by NXP, according to the lawsuit filed in June 2019.
In that initial filing, Impinj claimed NXP violated 26 of its patents, but patent numbers 302 and 597 were the only ones to be ruled on by the California jury. The 302 patent pertained to the shaped channel that is part of the Enduro technology, an Impinj spokesperson explained, while the 597 patent regards power-harvesting circuitry, which improves RAIN RFID tag sensitivity.
NXP Semiconductors, a Netherlands-based company valued at more than $11 billion, countersued Impinj in September of 2020, alleging infringement on six of its patents. Impinj managed to get those counts reduced to one and a jury in Washington state last month ruled against NXP on the last of its patent infringement claims.
NXP Semiconductors did not immediately respond to Sourcing Journal requests for comment.
RAIN RFID refers to an alliance of RFID tech companies, spearheaded by Impinj, that came together in 2014 to form a single brand of ultra high frequency (UHF) radio identification as a response to what they saw as the use of the term RFID being used “very broadly,” that “might confuse the market” around sensor technology.
The RAIN RFID brand seeks to set itself apart from the broader RFID market by operating in the UHF band between 860 and 960 MHz.
Lawsuits have previously cropped up elsewhere in the RFID sector. Supreme Court justices in May declined to hear Avery Dennison‘s appeal of a lower court’s ruling against it that ordered the Ohio packaging and labeling company to pay Oregon-based RFID innovator Adasa a $62.4 million award, which a judge raised from a jury’s original $26.6 million in damages. Avery Dennison wanted America’s highest court to clarify standards that leave questions about which inventions can and cannot be protected under government-recognized patents.
In other Impinj news, the company earlier this year acquired Voyantic, a Finnish specialist in testing and measuring RFID hardware and label design and production. “With leading end users relying on the Impinj platform to transform their business operations, this acquisition expands Impinj’s solutions footprint to advance the quality, reliability, and readability of the partner inlays and labels used in enterprise deployments,” Diorio wrote in a blog post dated April 26.
