Judge Gilstrap Partly Grants Dell's Motion and Holds Cloud Byte's '273 Patent Invalid After Finding an Infringement Theory Matched Dell's Prior Art Case, and Rules Out Direct Infringement of the '544 Patent for Servers With Fewer Than Three Drives.

The case

Cloud Byte sued Dell Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. on August 5, 2024, asserting seven patents against Dell networking, RAID, and server products, including PowerEdge servers, PowerEdge RAID Controllers, and the iDRAC and OpenManage Enterprise management tools. The patents include U.S. Patent 10,628,273, Node System, Server Apparatus, Scaling Control Method, and Program, and U.S. Patent 7,739,544, Disk Array System and Rebuild Method Thereof. The complaint charted at least claim 1 of the '273 patent and at least claim 13 of the '544 patent. An April 28, 2026 order records that Cloud Byte dropped two of the seven patents, the '632 and '249 patents.

The '273 ruling

Dell moved for summary judgment of no liability on the '273 patent. The order says the court "found one of the infringement theories disclosed in Dr. Williams' report matches the invalidity arguments raised by Defendants and analyzed by Dr. Wicker in his report," and that the '273 patent "was therefore invalidated by Plaintiff's position regarding infringement because all the elements are within the prior art, as analyzed by Dr. Wicker's report." The court granted summary judgment establishing invalidity of the '273 patent and no liability for Dell, basing its decision on "the maxim: that which infringes, if earlier, invalidates." The maxim traces to Peters v. Active Manufacturing Co., 129 U.S. 530 (1889). The motion was granted in part; the order does not identify the claims or prior art references involved.

The '544 ruling

On Dell's motion for partial summary judgment of non-infringement as to Dell's sales and its customers' use of the accused products, the court granted summary judgment "holding no direct infringement of the '544 Patent as to servers that have less than three drives" and otherwise denied the motion. The April 28 order had directed Cloud Byte's damages expert to address whether servers equipped with PERC controllers containing the accused RAID functionality are an appropriate proxy for servers with three or more drives.

Other rulings

The court denied all seven Daubert and strike motions it decided, directed at Dr. Stephen Becker, Dr. Tim Williams, Dr. Michael Akemann, Dr. Stephen Wicker, Dr. Tajana Rosing, and Dr. Murali Annavaram, and denied Cloud Byte's partial summary judgment motion on Dell's damages-related defenses. By agreement on a Dell motion in limine, Cloud Byte will not reference Dell's overall revenues, the revenues of its infrastructure solutions group, or the accused revenues, and no figures in the hundreds of millions or billions will be discussed except a Broadcom revenue amount as Cloud Byte's damages expert uses it; Dell agreed not to contest that expert's gross profit margin. The court granted Cloud Byte's motion in limine barring argument of any scheme or conspiracy among Pretium, Quinn Emanuel, NEC, and Cloud Byte, and denied Dell's motion to bar evidence of infringement based on Dell's internal use or testing.

Earlier rulings in the case

In the April 28 order, the court denied Dell's motion for summary judgment for failure to mark under 35 U.S.C. 287, finding disputed facts, and denied Cloud Byte's motion for summary judgment of no invalidity; the portions of that motion on the '544 and '273 patents were denied as moot because Dell had withdrawn its written description defenses for those two patents. The order also records that Dell dropped its section 101 defense. In a January 29, 2026 order, the court dismissed Dell's marking counterclaims as duplicative of its marking defense.

What it means

The '273 ruling shows the risk of a broad infringement theory in a case with a developed prior art record: when the theory reached the same features Dell's expert identified in earlier art, the court resolved validity on summary judgment rather than at trial. The '544 ruling removes servers with fewer than three drives from the direct infringement case, which bears on the royalty base Cloud Byte can present.

What to watch next

Watch for jury selection and trial, set for November 5, 2026 in Marshall, the parties' pre-admitted exhibit list, and, after any final judgment, an appeal of the '273 invalidity ruling to the Federal Circuit.