Comcast must face speech-recognition patent case, US appeals court says

Feb 16 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday revived a patent lawsuit against Comcast (CMCSA.O), over voice-recognition technology for television systems.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said, a Pennsylvania district court interpreted speech-recognition tech company Promptu Systems' patents incorrectly in a decision that had prompted the companies to end the case.

The same panel of judges separately said on Friday that Comcast attorney Mark Perry of Weil Gotshal & Manges had improperly exceeded length limits in a brief in a related case, despite an earlier precedential ruling from the court that "admonished the exact same law firm before us now for the exact same behavior."

The court declined to sanction Perry or the firm, but said it was unfair for Promptu to have spent extra time responding to the overlong brief.

Perry and representatives for Comcast and Promptu did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the rulings.

Menlo Park, California-based Promptu sued Comcast in 2016, accusing its remotes and set-top boxes of infringing three patents and requesting an unspecified amount of monetary damages. Promptu said that Comcast had copied its technology after years of meetings about a potential collaboration.

The court adopted interpretations of the patents that favored Comcast in 2022, which led to the companies agreeing to end the dispute.

A three-judge Federal Circuit panel determined on Friday that the Pennsylvania court had misconstrued parts of two of the patents and sent the case back for it to reconsider.

The cases are Promptu Systems Corp v. Comcast Corp, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Nos. 22-1939 and 22-1093.