Josh.ai has filed a motion to dismiss the patent infringement lawsuit originally brought on by Snap One last August. The lawsuit against Josh.ai and AVA was originally filed by Snap on August 14, 2023.
In the April 30, 2024, motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Josh.ai attorneys laid out 32 pages of why Snap One’s method claims should be dismissed; why certain patent claims are invalid; and that Snap’s contract claims are contrary to the language included in the companies’ SDK agreement.
“From the outset, Snap’s complaints were not adequately investigated. Ultimately it will be shown – either through this motion or subsequent motions following discovery – that all of Snap’s claims are frivolous,” Josh.ai states in the 32-page motion, drafted by legal team at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
“As just one example, Snap’s patent claims were so poorly investigated before it filed a lawsuit that Snap could not articulate an infringement contention for one of its patents asserted in the initial complaint [“984 patent”].”
The motion of dismissal continues with Josh.ai stating that the bulk of patent claims logged in the First Amendment Complaint (FAC) fail because they allege infringement of method claims vis Josh’s physical devices.
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“It is blackletter law that sale of a device, even one capable of practicing a method, is not an infringement,” according to the motion.
Another of Snap One’s claims in the FAC involved a distributor agreement the two parties had signed in which Snap was named as a distributor of certain Josh products. Snap alleges that Josh violated this agreement.
According to Josh.ai, the agreement mischaracterizes the agreement as broadly “exclusive” and claims the company went against the agreement by selling to Snap dealers.
“But the reality is that Josh.ai expressly retained the right to sell its products to “any dealer” including Snap’s as well as directly to the public. The parties further agreed that they would compete against each other,” the dismissal motion states.
The third pillar of Josh.ai’s motion involves the complaint of trade-secret misappropriation and a trade-dress claim, which the company says was predicated on generic or functional product design that will never reflect acquired distinctiveness as required under the Supreme Court precedent.
“The trade-secret misappropriation claim is based on no facts, and boils down to another allegation that Josh.ai developed a Control4 integration with Snap One’s cooperation, Josh.ai included it in its generally available app, and AVA loaded it onto its remote controls. No trade secret is close to being implicated.”
Josh goes on to allege that Snap One is taking of its sizable resource advantages to court “as a way to subdue its competitors.
Snap One recently was acquired by Resideo and its ADI distribution for roughly $1.4 billion.
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