Industry standards can be helpful for a patentee tasked with proving infringement of standard-compliant products. Standards often lay out mandatory features, such that a patentee may be able to use infringement of the standard itself as a shortcut to establish infringement of a standard-compliant product (although there are limits on that type of proof, including that the patent must cover all possible implementations of the standard).
The question of whether infringement by a standard can be used to shortcut infringement proofs for a product recently came up before Judge Andrews on a summary judgment motion by the plaintiff in TQ Delta, LLC v. 2Wire, Inc., C.A. No. 13-1835-RGA.
The defendant's products in TQ Delta were accused of implementing an infringing functionality . . .
