Apple v. Samsung: Justifying Profit Disgorgement

Patent

AppleBriefApple has filed its merits brief defending the longstanding principle of profit-disgorgement as a remedy for design patent infringement. [AppleResponse]

The statute states that an adjudged infringer “shall be liable to the owner to the extent of his total profit.” 35 U.S.C. 289.  Apple argues that the lower courts are correct in finding that Samsung should be liable for profits associated with sales of its Galaxy phones that were adjudged to be infringing Apple’s iPhone design patents.

Apple writes:

The only issue before this Court is whether Samsung will be able to avoid fairly compensating Apple for its adjudicated infringement. Samsung takes aim at 35 U.S.C. § 289, which provides that a design patent infringer is “liable … to the extent of his total profit” on the “article of manufacture” to which the patented design has been applied. Congress enacted this remedy because it recognized that “it is the design that sells the article” and, because profits attributable to design are often “not apportionable,” “[i]t is expedient that the infringer’s entire profit on the article should be recoverable, as otherwise none of his profit can be recovered.” 18 Cong. Rec. 834 (1887). As the Solicitor General correctly notes (Br. 10-15), Samsung’s effort to read an apportionment requirement into § 289 is at odds not only with the statute’s plain language, but also with Congress’s contemporaneous explanation that the remedy was enacted in response to decisions of this Court taking exactly the approach Samsung now advocates. And as the government also correctly explains (Br. 16-31), identification of the relevant “article of manufacture” on which § 289 allows an award of total profit is a factual question for the jury on which the defendant bears the burden of proof. . . .

Samsung invokes highly speculative policy grounds that it believes justify upending the settled interpretation of a statutory remedy first adopted in 1887, readopted in 1952, and left unchanged since then. Samsung’s arguments are addressed to the wrong branch of government: It is not for this Court to decide whether to alter the statutory balance that Congress has chosen and left undisturbed for decades. Samsung’s farfetched hypotheticals are just that; and they ignore the reality of this case. Samsung is a sophisticated company that chose to copy the design innovations of its biggest competitor and profited significantly from doing so. That is precisely the type of conduct Congress long ago decided deserves an effective remedy.

What makes this case so big is the numbers involved – Here, the profits disgorged are hundreds of millions of dollars.

Noted design patent attorney Perry Saidman filed an amicus brief supporting Apple’s case on behalf of a group of companies that rely upon design patents in their business.  Saidman argues that design patents are critical to allow companies to protect ‘visually striking products’, and that the profit disgorgement “gives teeth to design patents” in a way that promotes settlements.   [AppleSaidman]

An additional supportive brief was filed on behalf of a group of “113 distinguished industrial design professionals and educators.”  The brief – filed by Mark Davies – argues that a product’s visual design is critically important in the sales of complex products. “[A] product’s visual design has powerful effects on the human mind and decision making processes, and eventually comes to signify to the consumer the underlying function, origin, and overall user experience of that product. [AppleDesigners]

The these two friend-of-the-court briefs are interesting in that they essentially make the same argument that I made in my old paper on Design Patents as Trademarks.

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Oral arguments for the case are set for October 11, 2016 in Washington DC.

The Limited Role of Common Sense in the Obviousness Analysis

Patent,

by Dennis Crouch

Decisions by the Patent Trial & Appeal Board are rarely overturned on appeal.  I expect that result is largely due to the fact that the Patent Office has staffed the Board with highly trained and skilled patent law experts.  The other important factor though, is the standard of review.  Factual findings made by the Board are reviewed for “substantial evidence” — meaning that the findings need not be “correct” but rather rather merely supported by “more than a mere scintilla of evidence.”  Thus, patentees are hard-pressed to get a reversal based upon erroneous factual conclusions.  (For a counter-example, see In re Warsaw Ortho (Fed. Cir. 2016).

In the new decision captioned Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple Inc., Appeal No. 15-2073 (Fed. Cir. 2016) [ArendiApple], the court has reversed the Board – finding an erroneous application of the law.  This approach to an appeal tends to work better – because issues of law decided by the PTAB are ordinarily reviewed de novo on appeal (except where the agency’s interpretation is given deference).

The holding:

Because the Board misapplied our law on the permissible use of common sense in an obviousness analysis, we reverse.

The software patent at issue involves a identifying a key in a document (such as a person’s name) and then searching a separate data-source for further information on that key. U.S. Patent No. 7,917,843 (claiming 1998 priority).

Single Reference Plus Common Sense: In its obviousness decision, the Board identified a single prior art reference (Pandit) that teaches the recognition of text classes (such as phone numbers) and then providing additional suggestions based upon that recognition (such as dial, add to contacts, etc.).  However, Pandit did not expressly teach a search of the separate data-source.  In concluding that the invention was obvious, the Board found that it would have been “reasonable . . . common sense” that Pandit would search through the contact list for the phone number before actually adding a new contact number. The board wrote:

[I]t would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan to utilize a computerized search for duplicate telephone entries when entering a telephone number in an electronic address book database as taught by Pandit.

In making its determination, the Board held that common sense must be applied throughout the obviousness analysis, and not only when combining references that disclose all the required limitations.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected the Board’s analysis – holding that Common Sense must be confined to its “proper place in the obviousness inquiry.” (I expect that this line from the opinion is one that will likely upset members of the Supreme Court because it is ridiculous.).

Caveats to Common Sense: In confining the use of common sense, the Federal Circuit identified three “caveats” to its use:

  1. “First, common sense is typically invoked to provide a known motivation to combine, not to supply a missing claim limitation.”
  2. Second, when common sense is used to supply a missing claim limitation, it should only apply where the missing limitations is “unusually simple and the technology particularly straightforward.”
  3. “Third . . . common sense . . . cannot be used as a wholesale substitute for reasoned analysis and evidentiary support, especially when dealing with a limitation missing from the prior art references specified.”

Although not listed specifically as a caveat, the court also discussed a fourth – that statements of common sense or general knowledge cannot overcome “important” claim limitations without supporting evidence.

Question of Substantial Evidence: Stepping back from these broad statements of law, the court partially reforms its opinion to the proper question –  “whether there was substantial evidence supporting the Board’s finding that common sense would lead one to search for the telephone number in Pandit.”  In the appeal, the Federal Circuit found that no evidence had been presented regarding the common sense conclusion but rather only attorney argument. “Specifically, Appellees have failed to show why it would be common sense for the ‘Add to address book’ function to operate by first ‘search[ing] for entries with the same telephone number.'”

To be clear – I am 100% on board here – that an obviousness finding must be supported by evidence.  Unfortunately, that is not what the Supreme Court appeared to rule in KSR v. Teleflex — where it suggested that “analysis” can do the trick.

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Arendi has infringement cases pending in Delaware against Blackberry, Motorola, Google, Apple, Sony, Nokia, HTC, Yahoo!, Samsung, and LG.  Arendi is a Luxembourg patent owner created by the ‘843’s Norwegian inventor Atle Hedløy.

Some thoughts on Broadest Reasonable Interpretation

Patent,

By Jason Rantanen

A few weeks ago, my curiosity took me into trying to figure out what broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) actually means as an approach to claim construction and how it differs from claim construction in infringement proceedings.  Surprisingly, there’s relatively little in treatises or academic work on this subject so I ended up putting together a short essay on the subject.  Here are links to the essay on SSRN and SocArXiv.

The abstract:

In this essay, I examine the meaning of “broadest reasonable interpretation” along two dimensions: how it affects the Federal Circuit’s review of Patent Office claim constructions and what it seems to mean in substantive terms. Central to both is the term “reasonable.” How should that term be understood? Does it mean that the Federal Circuit grants deference to the Patent Office when reviewing its constructions, as some commentators describe and some opinions suggest? And, perhaps more importantly, what is a “broadest reasonable interpretation” and how does that fit into the process of claim construction generally?

Here, I argue that regardless of one’s view on the historical nature of judicial review of Patent Office claim interpretation, any deference is inconsistent with the Federal Circuit’s use of a de novo standard when reviewing claim interpretations by the Patent Office (with the exception of findings of fact relating to extrinsic evidence). Second, I argue that the still-developing jurisprudence at the Federal Circuit is coalescing around a meaning of “broadest reasonable interpretation” that allows for the existence of multiple ordinary meanings and reads the intrinsic evidence with a certain degree of “looseness,” but which is still hesitant to embrace ambiguity within the application of the tools of claim construction.

Enhancing Damages in Halo v. Pulse

Patent,

The 2012 jury verdict form in Halo v. Pulse asks “Has Halo proven that it is highly probable that Pulse’s infringement was willful?”  The jury answered “YES.”

HaloVerdict

Judge Pro instructed the jury that:

Halo must prove willful infringement by clear and convincing evidence. This means Halo must persuade you that it is highly probable that prior to the filing date of the complaint, Pulse acted with reckless disregard of the claims of Halo’s patents. To demonstrate such reckless disregard, Halo must persuade you that Pulse actually knew or it was so obvious that Pulse should have known, that Pulse’s actions constituted infringement of a valid patent. In deciding whether Pulse acted with reckless disregard for Halo’s patents, you should consider all of the facts surrounding the alleged infringement including, but not limited to, whether Pulse acted in a manner consistent with the standard of commerce for its industry. You should base your decision on the issue of willful infringement on all of the evidence, regardless of which party presented it.

When it originally denied enhanced damages, the district court did not mention this verdict but rather focused on its conclusion that Pulse had a legitimate (but ultimately losing) obviousness defense sufficient to defeat the ‘objectively reckless’ portion of the Seagate willfulness analysis.

On remand the district court will be hard-pressed to find that the infringement was not willful – based upon the apparently unchallenged verdict.  Still, it will be within the district court’s discretion to decide whether the willfulness warrants enhanced damages under Section 284. If enhanced damages are warranted, the district court must then determine how much to award (with an upper limit of treble damages).

The setup thus-far appears to fairly neatly wrap up the case in Halo’s favor in terms of enhanced damages.  Perhaps the only abuse-of-discretion at this point would occur if the district court refused to award any enhancement at all.  In the four-years since the 2012 jury verdict, Judge Pro has retired and a new judge assigned to the case – it will be interesting to see his take on this decade-long litigation.

Indefiniteness: Terms Cannot be Moving Targets

Patent

IconIconby Dennis Crouch

Icon Health v. Polar Electro & Garmin Int’l. (Fed. Cir. 2016) [IconHealth]

In a non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit has affirmed that Icon’s asserted patent claims are invalid because they “fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.”  Although indefiniteness is a question of law subject to de novo review, the starting point of that review is almost always the district court opinion – thus the court here looked for errors in the district court decision.  That is especially true here where the district court decision was based in part on underlying factual conclusions that receive deference under Teva.

Claims define the scope of the exclusive patent right and there are a number of benefits associated with having that scope clearly delineated.  Because patentees have control of claim language, the law places a burden on patentees to also ensure clarity.  Section 112 of the Patent Act requires that requires “one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.” In Nautilus, the Supreme Court interpreted the statute as requiring claims to “inform those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention with reasonable certainty.”  As I have written before, “reasonable certainty” is generally thought of as a high standard that is difficult to meet, but the Supreme Court did not elaborate on its meaning in the patent context. Up to now, the Federal Circuit has also resisted an exploration of the term’s meaning other than noting that the standard is significantly higher than was was previously in play.

The patent at issue covers an “exercise system” that includes “in-band communication” with a local server; “out-of-band communication” with the user; and a “relationship” between the in-band and out-of-band communication.  Both the district and appellate courts found that this “relationship” was undefined and that the distinction between the two forms of communication was unduly ambiguous.

At the Markman hearing, the district court allowed expert testimony on the meaning and definiteness of these terms and the Federal Circuit approved of that approach – since “the indefiniteness of the claim terms simply cannot be resolved by reference solely to the intrinsic evidence (i.e., the claims, specification, and prosecution history).”  The defendants here took an interesting tack of presenting ten-different extrinsic references and showing that the meaning of the communication forms would vary depending upon which was chosen. Thus, based upon that evidence, the courts found “that those skilled in the art understand that the terms ‘in-band’ and ‘out-of-band’ are relative terms, and only have meaning in a given context with a defined reference, such as a frequency, a channel, a protocol, time slots, and data streams.”  Because the patents themselves offered no such context, they were deemed indefinite.

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I mentioned above that indefiniteness is a question of law.  A major limitation on that approach however comes from Teva, where the Supreme Court held that underlying factual conclusions regarding evidence extrinsic to the file history should be given deference on appeal.  Here, the court found that the conclusions regarding the ten extrinsic references “constitute findings of fact, and we review such factual findings for clear error. Teva.”

= = = = =

Level of Proof Depends upon Purpose of Proof: Teva does offer an interesting dichotomy regarding factual conclusions that may need further exploration. Although parties may benefit from deference on appeal – there is also the higher standard of proof – “clear and convincing evidence” – that must be met before a claim may be found invalid.  The result of this evidentiary burden then is that the level of proof required to support factual conclusions underlying a claim construction determination will depend upon the purpose for which the claim construction is being used.  If invalidity then the underlying conclusions require presentation of clear-and-convincing evidence; if infringement then the court’s underlying conclusions require only a preponderance of the evidence.

Federal Circuit: District Courts Must Exercise their Discretion and in Deciding Whether to Enhance Infringement Damages

Patent, , ,

by Dennis Crouch

Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics (Fed. Cir. 2016)

On remand from the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit has shifted its holding on enhanced damages (as required by the Supreme Court) and remanded for reconsideration:

Because the district court applied the Seagate test in declining to enhance damages . . . we vacate its unenhanced damages award with respect to products that were delivered in the United States, and remand for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion on enhanced damages.

The only remaining in the case is that of enhanced damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284.  In its Halo decision, the Supreme Court held that the provision “gives district courts the discretion to award enhanced damages . . . in egregious cases of misconduct beyond typical infringement.”  The court rejected the Federal Circuit’s prior test under Seagate, noting that it was both “unduly rigid” and “impermissibly encumbers the statutory grant of discretion to district courts.” (quoting Octane Fitness).

According to the evidence previously presented,

“Pulse allegedly knew of the Halo patents as early as 1998. In 2002, Halo sent Pulse two letters offering licenses to its patents, but did not accuse Pulse of infringement in those letters. The president of Pulse contacted a Pulse engineer, who spent about two hours reviewing the Halo patents and concluded that they were invalid in view of prior Pulse products. Pulse did not seek an opinion of counsel on the validity of the Halo patents at that time and continued to sell its surface mount electronic package products. A Pulse witness later testified that she was “not aware of anyone in the company . . . that made a conscious decision” that “it was permissible to continue selling” those products.”

Hearing this evidence, the jury found that “it [was] highly probable that Pulse’s infringement was willful.”  However, the district court held that it could not find willfulness under Seagate because the obviousness defense was not objectively baseless.

On remand, the district court must now “exercise its discretion and to decide whether, taking into consideration the jury’s unchallenged subjective willfulness finding as one factor in its analysis, an enhancement of the damages award is warranted.”  The statement from the Federal Circuit here is interesting and important in its focus on the question of enhancement rather than willfulness. Notably, the court does not suggest that the district court first determine whether Pulse was a willful infringer and then determine whether to enhance damages.  Rather, the Federal Circuit indicates that the discretion for enhanced damages is a full bundle of discretion and willfulness only “one factor in [the] analysis.”  This approach matches with the statutory language of Section 284 that does not mention willfulness but rather simply indicates that “the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.”

florence-nightingale-1[1]At the Time of the Infringement: Of course, as the Supreme Court wrote, the discretion is not limited. In considering Pulse’s culpability, the Federal Circuit also noted the Supreme Court’s statement that “culpability is generally measured against the knowledge of the actor at the time of the challenged conduct.”   Thus, an important question on will be the level of culpability at the time of infringement. There will also be a question of who-knew-what and the extent that the court will follow Florence Nightengale’s opinion that the person ‘in charge’ must “not only to carry out the proper measures yourself but to see that every one else does so too; to see that no one either willfully or ignorantly thwarts or prevents such measures.”

“Consisting Of” Limits Markush Group to Only Those Elements Listed

Patent

by Dennis Crouch

Although our attention over the past few years has focused more on eligibility and definiteness issues, claim construction continues to befuddle the courts.  In MultiLayer Stretch Cling Film v. Berry Plastics (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit has offered a split interpretation of the patent’s Markush group claim element.

The asserted cling-film claim requires “five identifiable inner layers with each layer being selected from the group consisting of LLDPE, VLDPE, ULDPE, and mLLDPE resins.”

The accused products include inner layers made of a different resin (not listed in the claim) and also layers with blends of the above listed resins.  In claim-construction mode, the court found that the claim would not extend to these embodiments.  The court particularly focused on the “consisting of” language used in defining the group and noted that a broader approach would have written “comprising.”

What is critical here is that the transitional phrase . . . “consisting of,” is a term of art in patent law with a distinct and well-established meaning. Use of the transitional phrase “consisting of” to set off a patent claim element creates a very strong presumption that that claim element is “closed” and therefore “exclude[s] any elements, steps, or ingredients not specified in the claim.” . . . Thus, if a patent claim recites “a member selected from the group consisting of A, B, and C,” the “member” is presumed to be closed to alternative ingredients D, E, and F. By contrast, the alternative transitional term “‘comprising’ creates a presumption that the recited elements are only a part of the device, that the claim does not exclude additional, unrecited elements.”

The majority agreed with the dissent that elements of the specification as well as other claims suggest that the broader invention includes other non-listed resins.  However, the majority and dissent disagreed on the impact of those alternative facts.

The majority:

We do not think that the listing of these other resins in the specification is sufficient to overcome the presumption created by the “consisting of” claim language. . . . [Further], ‘[t]he dependent claim tail cannot wag the independent claim dog.’

The Dissent:

I think that this is a close call, but I would conclude that the claim language is not so plain.

The dissent’s textual argument is that, although “layer consisting of [listed resins]” would have been clear, that clarity was muddied by the patentee’s more complex “layer being selected from the group consisting of [listed resins].”   The actual claim language leaves “semantic uncertainty” that then opens the door to more consideration of the specification and claim differentiation.

 

 

Dear USPTO: Nine-Month Delay is not Prompt Publication as Requied by Statute

Patent

by Dennis Crouch

In researching for my recent essay on Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A. (Fed. Cir. August 1, 2016), I looked into the family of the three invalidated patents.[1]  As I expected, the patentee has at child-applications still pending.

  • Application No. 14/954,886 filed on 11-30-2015 which is Pending; and
  • Application No. 15/080,578 filed on 03-24-2016 which is Pending.

Following the court’s decision, these likely will be (or perhaps already have been) amended in attempt to recapture coverage lost by the invalidations. Unfortunately, we don’t know what is happening with these cases.

Although both of these pending applications apparently claim priority back to a 2003 application and multiple issued patents, neither file-history is publicly available via PAIR since neither application has been published.  This, despite the statutory requirement that applications “shall be published . . . promptly after the expiration of a period of 18 months from the earliest filing date for which a [priority] benefit is sought.”[2]

The 9-month delay in publication here is inappropriate and problematic. When an application already qualifies for publication as of its filing date, then it should be immediately published and the file history automatically laid open for public inspection and consideration.  It is these late-family applications where applicant game playing is most likely.  And, although public access is not a cure, it can help address some of the potential issues.

It turns out that most continuation and divisional applications are published about 4-months after filing even though the 18-month date had already passed as of the filing date. That delay is already unduly long, it is unclear why the PTO has taken so much longer with these cases.

Moving forward, the USPTO Director is already empowered to make this change.  Technological feasibility can perhaps justify the historic delay.  However, a multi-month delay can no longer realistically square with the requirement that applications be published “promptly” following the 18-month date.

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[1] U.S. Patent Nos. 7,233,843; 8,060,259; and 8,401,710.

[2] 35 U.S.C. § 122(b).

Letter to Congress from 28 Law Professors & Economists Urging Caution on the VENUE Act

Patent,

In July 2016, I discussed a letter from 45 professors arguing for statutory reforms to limit venue in patent infringement cases.  The letter focused on the “staggering concentration of patent cases in just a few federal district courts” and offered the the positive conclusion that such a concentration is “bad for the patent system.”  In the abstract, concentration of cases is not necessarily bad — here though, the particular arguable “badness” is that the high concentration of cases is in the Eastern District of Texas rather than Silicon Valley, New York, Chicago, or Delaware.

Now, a competing group of law professors has offered their suggestion – urging caution in terms of patent venue reform, especially with regard to the pending VENUE Act. Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination Act, S.2733, 114th Cong. (2016).   The proposed VENUE Act would allow patent actions to be brought only in judicial districts where:

  • the defendant has its principal place of business or is incorporated;
  • the defendant has committed an act of infringement of a patent in suit and has a regular and established physical facility that gives rise to the act of infringement;
  • the defendant has agreed or consented to be sued;
  • an inventor named on the patent conducted research or development that led to the application for the patent in suit; or
  • a party has a regular and established physical facility and has managed significant research and development for the invention claimed in the patent, has manufactured a tangible product alleged to embody that invention, or has implemented a manufacturing process for a tangible good in which the process is alleged to embody the invention.

Under the current statutory framework (as interpreted), venue is proper in any jurisdiction where the court has personal jurisdiction over the defendants.  For any large company operating in the US, this current approach leads to the results that venue for a patent infringement case is proper in any federal court across the country – including those located in the Eastern District of Texas.

The new letter argues that the venue limiting proposals are basically serving as a mechanism of weakening the power of patent holders: “The reality is that the major proponents of changing the venue rules are primarily large high-tech companies and retailers with an online presence sued in the Eastern District of Texas that would rather litigate in a small number of more defendant-friendly jurisdictions.”

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[Read the Full Letter]

Dear Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Leahy, Chairman Goodlatte, and Ranking Member Conyers:

As legal academics, economists, and political scientists who conduct research in patent law and policy, we write to express our concerns about the recent push for sweeping changes to patent litigation venue rules, such as those proposed in the VENUE Act.[1] These changes would vastly restrict where all patent owners could file suit—contrary to the general rule that a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit against a corporate defendant can select any court with jurisdictional ties to the defendant.[2]

Given the recent changes in the patent system under the America Invents Act of 2011 and judicial decisions that have effectively weakened patent rights,[3] we believe that Congress should adopt a cautious stance to enacting additional changes that further weaken patent rights, at least until the effects of these recent changes are better understood.

Proponents of amending the venue rules have an initially plausible-sounding concern: the Eastern District of Texas handles a large percentage of patent infringement lawsuits and one judge within that district handles a disproportionate share of those cases. The reality is that the major proponents of changing the venue rules are primarily large high-tech companies and retailers with an online presence sued in the Eastern District of Texas that would rather litigate in a small number of more defendant-friendly jurisdictions.

Indeed, the arguments in favor of this unprecedented move to restrict venue do not stand up to scrutiny. Specifically:

  • Proponents for the VENUE Act argue that “[t]he staggering concentration of patent cases in just a few federal district courts is bad for the patent system.”[4] As an initial matter, data indicates that filings of patent lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas have dropped substantially this year—suggesting a cautious approach until trends have stabilized.[5]
  • Contrary to claims by its proponents, legislative proposals like the VENUE Act would not spread lawsuits throughout the country. In fact, these same proponents have found that restricting venue in a manner similar to the VENUE Act would likely result in concentrating more than 50% of patent lawsuits in just two districts: the District of Delaware (where most publicly traded corporations are incorporated) and the Northern District of California (where many patent defendants are headquartered).[6] Instead of widely distributing patent cases across numerous districts in order to promote procedural “fairness,” the VENUE Act would primarily channel cases into only two districts, which happen to be districts where it is considered much more difficult to enforce patent rights.[7]
  • Proponents for the VENUE Act have argued that the Eastern District of Texas is reversed more often by the Federal Circuit than other jurisdictions, claiming that in 2015 the Federal Circuit affirmed only 39% of the Eastern District of Texas’s decisions but affirmed over 70% of decisions from the Northern District of California and District of Delaware.[8] These figures are misleading: they represent only one year of data, mix trials and summary judgment orders, and fail to take into account differences in technology types and appeals rates in each district. In fact, a more complete study over a longer time period by Price Waterhouse Coopers found that the Eastern District of Texas affirmance rate is only slightly below the national average for all districts.[9]
  • The Federal Circuit recently confirmed in In re TC Heartland (Fed. Cir. Apr. 29, 2016) that 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) provides that a corporate defendant in a patent case—like corporate defendants in nearly all other types of cases—may be sued in any district in which personal jurisdiction lies. Constitutional due process requires a “substantial connection” between the defendant and forum.[10] Thus, contrary to its title and the claims of its proponents, the VENUE Act does not re-establish a “uniform” litigation system for patent rights by requiring substantial ties to the forum. Instead, the Act thwarts the well-established rule that plaintiffs can bring suit in any jurisdiction in which a corporate defendant has committed substantial violations of the law.[11]
  • The VENUE Act would raise costs for many patent owners by requiring them to litigate the same patent against multiple defendants in multiple jurisdictions, increasing patent litigation overall. In recent years, the America Invents Act’s prohibition on joinder of multiple defendants in a single lawsuit for violating the same patent has directly resulted in increased lawsuits and increased costs for patent owners.[12] Moreover, the VENUE Act would also result in potentially conflicting decisions in these multiple lawsuits, increasing uncertainty and administration costs in the patent system.
  • The VENUE Act encourages the manipulation of well-settled venue rules across all areas of law by the self-serving efforts of large corporate defendants who seek to insulate themselves from the consequences of violating the law. By enacting the VENUE Act, Congress would send a strong signal to corporate defendants that they can tilt the substantive playing field by simply shifting cases to defendant-friendly jurisdictions.

Innovators and their investors have long been vital to a flourishing innovation economy in the United States.  Startups, venture capitalists, individual inventors, universities, and established companies often rely heavily on patents to recoup their extensive investments in both R&D and commercialization.  We urge you to exercise caution before enacting further sweeping changes to our patent system that would primarily benefit large infringers to the detriment of these innovators and, ultimately, our innovation economy.

[Footnotes]

[1] S.2733, Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination Act of 2016,  https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/s2733/BILLS-114s2733is.pdf.

[2] See 28 U.S.C. § 1391(c)(2). See generally Ferens v. John Deere Co., 494 U.S. 516, 527 (1990) (“a plaintiff . . . has the option of shopping for a forum with the most favorable law”).

[3] These include, among others: (1) administrative procedures for invalidating patents created by the America Invents Act, which have had extremely high invalidation rates, leading one former federal appellate judge to refer to these procedures as “death squads,” and (2) several decisions by the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit that have drastically curtailed patent rights for many innovators. See Adam Mossoff, Weighing the Patent System: It Is Time to Confront the Bias against Patent Owners in Patent ‘Reform’ Legislation, Washington Times, March 24, 2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/24/adam-mossoff-weighing-the-patent-system/.

[4] Colleen Chien & Michael Risch, A Patent Reform We Can All Agree On, Wash. Post, June 3, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/11/20/why-do-patent-lawyers-like-to-file-in-texas/.

[5] See Michael C. Smith, “Hot But No Longer Boiling“ – EDTX Patent Case Filings Down almost Half; New Case Allocation and Procedures (No More Letter Briefing for SJ motions), EDTexweblog.com, July 21, 2016, http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2016/07/edtx-patent-case-filing-trends-new-case-allocation-and-procedures.html.

[6] Colleen Chien & Michael Risch, What Would Happen to Patent Cases if They Couldn’t all be Filed in Texas?, Patently-O, March 11, 2016, https://patentlyo.com/patent/2016/03/happen-patent-couldnt.html. This study also finds that 11% of cases would continue to be filed in the Eastern District of Texas, concentrating nearly two-thirds of all cases in three districts. See id. The authors of this study are presently expanding their investigation to an enlarged data set, which will also capture additional aspects of the VENUE Act. Neither the data nor their results are available yet. However, we have no reason to believe that the expanded data or analysis will produce results other than what has already been shown: a high concentration of patent cases in a small number of districts.

[7] See PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 2015 Patent Litigation Study (May 2015) (“PWC Study”), http://www.pwc.com/us/en/forensic-services/publications/assets/2015-pwc-patent-litigation-study.pdf.

[8] Ryan Davis, EDTX Judges’ Love of Patent Trials Fuels High Reversal Rate, Law360 (Mar. 8, 2016), http://www.law360.com/articles/767955/edtx-judges-love-of-patent-trials-fuels-high-reversal-rate.

[9] See PWC Study, supra note 7 (finding an average affirmance rate of 48% for all districts, compared to an affirmance rate of 42% for the Eastern District of Texas).

[10] See Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 475 (1985).

[11] See generally Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 508 (1947) (“[T]he plaintiff’s choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.”).

[12] See Christopher A. Cotropia, Jay P. Kesan & David L. Schwartz, Unpacking Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), 99 Minnesota Law Review 649 (2014), http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/REVISEDSchwartzetal_MLR.pdf.

 

35 U.S. Code § 316 – Conduct of inter partes review

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(a)Regulations.—The Director shall prescribe regulations—

(1) providing that the file of any proceeding under this chapter shall be made available to the public, except that any petition or document filed with the intent that it be sealed shall, if accompanied by a motion to seal, be treated as sealed pending the outcome of the ruling on the motion;
(2) setting forth the standards for the showing of sufficient grounds to institute a review under section 314(a);
(3) establishing procedures for the submission of supplemental information after the petition is filed;
(4) establishing and governing inter partes review under this chapter and the relationship of such review to other proceedings under this title;
(5) setting forth standards and procedures for discovery of relevant evidence, including that such discovery shall be limited to—
(A) the deposition of witnesses submitting affidavits or declarations; and
(B) what is otherwise necessary in the interest of justice;
(6) prescribing sanctions for abuse of discovery, abuse of process, or any other improper use of the proceeding, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or an unnecessary increase in the cost of the proceeding;
(7) providing for protective orders governing the exchange and submission of confidential information;
(8) providing for the filing by the patent owner of a response to the petition under section 313 after an inter partes review has been instituted, and requiring that the patent owner file with such response, through affidavits or declarations, any additional factual evidence and expert opinions on which the patent owner relies in support of the response;
(9) setting forth standards and procedures for allowing the patent owner to move to amend the patent under subsection (d) to cancel a challenged claim or propose a reasonable number of substitute claims, and ensuring that any information submitted by the patent owner in support of any amendment entered under subsection (d) is made available to the public as part of the prosecution history of the patent;
(10) providing either party with the right to an oral hearing as part of the proceeding;
(11) requiring that the final determination in an inter partes review be issued not later than 1 year after the date on which the Director notices the institution of a review under this chapter, except that the Director may, for good cause shown, extend the 1-year period by not more than 6 months, and may adjust the time periods in this paragraph in the case of joinder under section 315(c);
(12) setting a time period for requesting joinder under section 315(c); and
(13) providing the petitioner with at least 1 opportunity to file written comments within a time period established by the Director.

(b)Considerations.—

In prescribing regulations under this section, the Director shall consider the effect of any such regulation on the economy, the integrity of the patent system, the efficient administration of the Office, and the ability of the Office to timely complete proceedings instituted under this chapter.

(c)Patent Trial and Appeal Board.—

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board shall, in accordance with section 6, conduct each inter partes review instituted under this chapter.

(d) Amendment of the Patent.—

(1)In general.—During an inter partes review instituted under this chapter, the patent owner may file 1 motion to amend the patent in 1 or more of the following ways:
(A) Cancel any challenged patent claim.
(B) For each challenged claim, propose a reasonable number of substitute claims.
(2)Additional motions.—
Additional motions to amend may be permitted upon the joint request of the petitioner and the patent owner to materially advance the settlement of a proceeding under section 317, or as permitted by regulations prescribed by the Director.
(3)Scope of claims.—
An amendment under this subsection may not enlarge the scope of the claims of the patent or introduce new matter.

(e)Evidentiary Standards.—

In an inter partes review instituted under this chapter, the petitioner shall have the burden of proving a proposition of unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence.

Common Sense Distinctions in Section 101 Analysis

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by Dennis Crouch

In a short opinion, Judge Taranto has affirmed the lower court ruling that Electric Power Group’s asserted claims lacked subject matter eligibility.  U.S. Patent Nos. 7,233,843; 8,060,259; and 8,401,710.  The court writes:

Though lengthy and numerous, the claims do not go beyond requiring the collection, analysis, and display of available information in a particular field, stating those functions in general terms, without limiting them to technical means for performing the functions that are arguably an advance over conventional computer and network technology. The claims, defining a desirable information-based result and not limited to inventive means of achieving the result, fail under § 101.

Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A. (Fed. Cir. August 1, 2016) [EPGvsAlstom] (Judges Taranto, Bryson, and Stoll).

PowerGroupThe claims at issue require the reception of real-time data coming in from a wide geographical distribution; analyzing the data for instability that may be indicative of grid stress; displaying visualizations of the stability metrics; storing the data; and deriving a composite indicator of power grid reliability.  According to the court, this sequence – even when taken as a whole – is an abstract idea.  Thus, a collection of abstract ideas is itself likely to be an abstract idea.

In distinguishing Enfish, the court explained that the claims here merely used “existing computers as tools in aid of processes focused on abstract ideas” while Enfish claimed “computer-functionality improvements . . . a particular database technique—in how computers could carry out one of their basic functions of storage and retrieval of data.”   Although line drawing may be admittedly difficult at times it was not difficult for the court here.

In Step-Two of a Alice/Mayo, the courts asks whether the claims require “something more” than the abstract idea that is sufficient to serve as a foundation for the invention.  Although not entirely clear, this “something more” is generally thought to require an inventive concept – a point of novelty sufficient to transform the idea into a patent eligible invention.   Here, the court found that none of the sources of information, analysis & display techniques, or measures were new or inventive.

The claims in this case . . . do not include any requirement for performing the claimed functions of gathering, analyzing, and displaying in real time by use of anything but entirely conventional, generic technology. The claims therefore do not state an arguably inventive concept in the realm of application of the information-based abstract ideas.

According to the patentee, the benefit of the invention was to provide “humanly comprehensible” information regarding an extremely complex system.  The court rejected that result as offering a patent eligible concept:

Merely requiring the selection and manipulation of information—to provide a “humanly comprehensible” amount of information useful for users, by itself does not transform the otherwise-abstract processes of information collection and analysis.

Common Sense Distinction: Perhaps the most important added element of the opinion is the appellate court’s approval of the lower court’s “important common-sense distinction between ends sought and particular means of achieving them, between desired results (functions) and particular ways of achieving (performing) them.”  Here, the court found that the claims were effectively directed to the problem-to-be-solved rather than the actual and concretely defined solution to the problem.  Although the appellate panel acknowledged that this distinction is not the Alice/Mayo test, but rather as “one helpful way of double-checking the application of the Supreme Court’s framework to particular claims.”

Indeed, the essentially result-focused, functional character of claim language has been a frequent feature of claims held ineligible under § 101, especially in the area of using generic computer and network technology to carry out economic transactions. In this case, the district court’s wrap-up description confirms its, and our, conclusion that the claims at issue fail to meet the standard for patent eligibility under § 101.

This statement of the appellate court is designed to further free district courts to apply common sense in their Section 101 analysis.

Federal Circuit: Still No Clarity on Definiteness Standard

Patent

reasonabledoubtAlthough non-precedential, Philips v. Zoll Medical (Fed. Cir. July 28, 2016) offers some interesting insight on the Federal Circuit’s approach to indefiniteness.

The Patent Act requires that claims be written in a way that “particularly point[s] out and distinctly claim[s] the subject matter which the inventor . . . regards as the invention.” 35 U.S.C. 112(b).  In Nautilus, the Supreme Court held that a patent claim survives this test only if it provides “reasonable certainty” as to the scope and bounds of the invention.

In the case, the jury was instructed under the old standard that permitted invalidation under 112(a) only when a claim’s meaning was “insolubly ambiguous.”  On appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated the not-invalid jury verdict and ordered a new trial.  The court writes:

While there may be some factual scenario where the reference to “insolubly ambiguous” is nonprejudicial, this is not that case. Here, the sentence, “Rather, only claims that are insolubly ambiguous are indefinite,” is the strongest, most forceful statement in the entire instructions on indefiniteness. It seems almost certain that amidst the back-and-forth, give-and-take of the remainder of the jury instructions on indefiniteness, the jury would gravitate to the single, definitive statement in the instructions. Furthermore, this sentence is juxtaposed with, “Absolute clarity is not necessary,” and connected with “rather, only,” which slants the playing field against a finding of indefiniteness in a way that is no longer appropriate after Nautilus. On this basis, we find that the district court’s reference to the insolubly ambiguous standard was prejudicial.

Although we know that Nautilus made it easier to invalidate claims as indefinite, the court still has not spelled out the meaning of “reasonable certainty.”  On this point, the court merely demurred: “While we have not clarified the relationship between ‘insolubly ambiguous’ and ‘reasonably certain,’ it must be admitted that the “insolubly ambiguous” standard is a harder threshold to meet than the post-Nautilus standard.”

Although the reasonable certainty test is new to the indefiniteness doctrine, it is not new to the law.  The area where it is most well known is likely in proving “special damages” such as lost-profits on breach of contract or in a tort action. Some have also linked “reasonable certainty” as the inverse of “reasonable doubt.”  Reasonable certainty only exists when there is no reasonable doubt. Henry L. Chambers, Jr., Reasonable Certainty and Reasonable Doubt, 81 Marq. L. Rev. 655 (Spring 1998).

The bottom line for the reasonable certainty standard is that, while some uncertainty is permissible, the scope should be free from speculation or conjecture.

[Updated to fix typo 102(b), not 102(a)]

License Arbitration Clause Ineffective Because it Excluded Issues of Patent Scope

Patent

Illumina v. Ariosa (Fed. Cir. 2016)

Under the Federal Arbitration Act arbitration agreements are binding.  However, arbitration agreements are typically limited in scope, and a court will only order arbitration of disputes covered by the agreement.

Here, the Federal Circui has affirmed a lower court finding that the arbitration agreement does not cover the Ariosa’s breach-of-contract counterclaim despite the contract language mandating arbitration of claim “arising out of or relating to the breach . . . of this Agreement.”  The problem, according to the court, is that the contract includes a major exception – that  “no arbitration shall resolve, disputes relating to issues of scope, infringement, validity and/or enforceability of any Intellectual Property Rights.”  And, the breach-of-contract claim arose from (and will be resolved by) Illumina’s original allegations of patent infringement.

The essence of the conflict is whether Illumina’s U.S. Patent No. 7,955,794 is covered by the “Core IP Rights” licensed as part of a 2012 supply agreement.  Illumina argues that ‘794 patent was not licensed and, when Ariosa refused to pay a license fee, sued Ariosa for patent infringement.  Ariosa’s counterclaim of breach of contract and other covenants stem directly from the infringement allegations.

Although it took a few steps to get there, the walked though how the breach-of-conflict claim relates to issues of patent “scope [and] infringement” and is therefore not arbitrable.  The question of “does the license cover the patent” would normally be thought of as one of license interpretation – and thus arbitrable under the contract.  Here, however, the license scope is defined as IP rights “that pertain to the Goods” being supplied. As such, the courts found that in this case an interpretation of patent scope is necessary to discover the answer.

The lesson here relates to patent license agreements — if licensed patents are defined by their scope or technology coverage (rather than by a listing of patent numbers for example), then a determination of that scope will almost necessarily be a part of any dispute over which patents are licensed.  Excluding patent scope questions from the arbitration clause will end up excluding those licensing questions as well. 

 

The Likely Indefiniteness of Coined Terms

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by Dennis Crouch

AGIS v. Life360 (Fed. Cir. 2016)

In some ways the case here can be thought of as placing a higher definiteness burden on patentees when relying upon non-industry-standard language such as coined-terms in the claims. This result makes sense to me because coined-terms are most likely to be found at points of novelty within the claim — the points where precision in description is most important. 

The AGIS claims all require a “symbol generator” to track mobile phone user location.   See U.S. Patent Nos. 7,031,728 (claims 3 and 10) and 7,672,681 (claims 5 and 9).  During claim construction, the district court found the term lacked definiteness under 35 U.S.C. 112 ¶ 2 (now 112(b)) and, although it would seemingly be a foregone conclusion, the parties stipulated that the claims were therefore invalid.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed the indefiniteness finding under its strict means-plus-function approach. The appellate panel first held that the “symbol generator” element should properly be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112 ¶ 6 as claiming a means for performing a specified function without reciting (in the claims) the supporting structure.  Under 112 ¶ 6, means-plus-function claim elements are However, the statute requires that MPF claim elements be tightly construed to cover only “the corresponding structure . . . described in the specification and equivalents thereof.”  Further, the Federal Circuit has repeatedly held that MPF claim elements that are not supported by corresponding structure within the specification are indefinite and thus invalid.

Step 1: Traditionally, claim elements intended to be interpreted as means-plus-function elements include the word “means.”  Here, the word ‘means’ was not used – and that leads to the a rebuttable presumption 112 ¶ 6 does not apply.  Prior to 2015, this presumption was seen as a “strong” presumption.  However, in Williamson (2015), the en banc Federal Circuit eliminated the “strong” portion of the presumption and in favor of one that appears easily rebuttable.  Under Williamson, 112 ¶ 6 will apply when the proper construction of the words of the claim fail to provide sufficiently definite structure.  The standard is “whether the words of the claim are understood by person of ordinary skill in the art to have a sufficiently definite meaning as the name for structure.” If not, then 112 ¶ 6 applies.

Here, the court noted that the term “symbol generator” was a term coined for the purposes of the patent and thus, cannot be said to be already known to one of skill in the art. As such, the court fell-back on its textual analysis – finding that “the combination of the terms [symbol and generator] as used in the context of the relevant claim language suggests that it is simply an abstraction that describes the function being performed (i.e., the generation of symbols) [and]  by itself, does not identify a structure by its function.”  Of interest, at this stage, the court did not delve into the question of whether the specification had properly defined the term.  I believe that omission was a result of the fact that the specification did not so define the term (as discussed below).

Step 2: Once a term is defined as Means-Plus-Function, the court must then look to the specification to determine whether corresponding structure is available to define the term. Here, because the symbol generator is a computer implemented function, the court requires disclosure of an algorithm for performing the function. Here, that algorithm was not provided. Quoting Aristocrat Tech, the court wrote: “A patentee cannot claim a means for performing a specific function and subsequently disclose a ‘general purpose computer as the structure designed to perform that function” because this “amounts to pure functional claiming.'”

Coined Terms and Circular Reasoning: Looking at the specifications, the only mention of the term “symbol generator” was found in one of the two specifications and that specification stated only that “The CPU also includes a symbol generator for creating touch screen display symbols discussed herein.”

Because MPF analysis involves circular reasoning, it is difficult to know what the result would have been if the specification had sufficiently and particularly defined the symbol generator as an algorithmic module.  That structural definition certainly would have been enough to satisfy structure requirement of 112 ¶ 6.  However, if it was sufficient to satisfy 112 ¶ 6, then it likely would have been sufficient to ensure that the proper construction of the term was non-MPF.  This leads to the conclusion that, at least for coined-terms, the whole game is won or lost at step 1 from above.

 

 

Inter Partes Review Statistics

Patent,

By Jason Rantanen

This post summarizes data on inter partes review proceedings and appeals from the Patent Office.  Although the office publishes a monthly Patent Trial and Appeal Board Statistics packet, the narratives contained within that packet can create confusion as discussed in Michael Sander’s guest post earlier this year.  Below are some of the charts that I’ve developed based on the publicly available information to attempt to get a better handle on what’s going on in terms of case flow and outcome.

As you look at these charts, keep in mind the temporal issues associated with IPR proceedings.  Once a petition is filed, it typically takes about six months before an institution decision is made.*  If a petition is instituted, it will be about a year (and sometimes more) before the trial decision.  Thus, very few petitions filed in the last four months or so will have reached the point of institution decisions, and nearly all trial decisions issued in the last few months relate to petitions filed over a year (and probably around 18 months) ago.  Appeals of trial outcomes will be filed within 2-3 months depending on whether a rehearing is requested.

The consequence of this is that each successive piece of information relates to an earlier time period.  The institution rates shown in the first graph relate to the petitions filed about 5-7 months earlier; the trial outcomes shown in the second graph relate to petitions filed about 18 months earlier (and instituted about 12 months earlier), and the appeal numbers relate to trial outcomes from about 2-3 months earlier (with the additional caveat that these are all appeals from the Patent Office, not just appeals from IPRs).  These sequences are approximations, but they’re important in understanding the relationship between filed petitions, institution rates, trial outcomes and appeals.

Finally, note that at each stage, some percentage of the cases continuing on after the earlier stage will drop out due to settlement or for other reasons (such as joinders at the institution stage).  Thinking of the data as an inverted pyramid might be helpful.

Petitions Filed and Institution DecisionsIPR Petitions1

Petition filing and institution rate data indicates that both the rate of filing and rate of institution have plateaued.  Since June of 2014, the number of new petitions filed each month has ranged between 96 and 184, with most quarters falling between about 400 and 450 new filings.  The fourth quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 did see a drop, though, so perhaps we’ve seen the peak of IPR petition filings.

Trial OutcomesIPR Trial Outcomes

The most interesting thing to note about the above graph of trial outcomes, which I created based on the differences reported in the monthly statistical reports issued by the PTO, might be that recent months have seen a fall in the percentage of trials in which all claims were held unpatentable.  In March 2016, for example, while 40 trials resulted in all claims held unpatentable, twenty-one resulted in no claims held unpatentable.  And in May and June, only a bit over 50% of the trials resulted in all claims held unpatentable.

Appeals

The below chart depicts the numbers of appeals docketed at the Federal Circuit arising from the PTO, the District Courts, and the International Trade Commission.  It illustrates a dramatic rise in the number of appeals from the PTO, with the number projected to surpass the number of appeals arising from the district courts this year.  It’s use in assessing IPR proceedings is limited due to the fact that the data does not differentiate between appeals from IPR proceedings and other appeals from the PTO.    I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who’s done the detailed breakdown of these appeals to know whether the standard hypothesis–that this rise is mainly due to appeals from IPR proceedings–is correct.

Appeals Docketed

*These numbers are based on the PTO’s own timeline, see 77 Fed. Reg. 48757 (Aug. 14, 2012), and data from LexMachina indicating the median time to institution decision is currently 185 days, and the median time to final decision is currently 540 days.

Unwired Planet v. Apple: Fault and Patent Infringement

Patent,

By Jason Rantanen

Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc. (Fed. Cir. July 22, 2016) Download Unwired Planet
Panel: Moore (author), Bryson, Reyna

Last week, the Federal Circuit issued two opinions, both written by Judge Moore, dealing with what I refer to as “fault” in patent law: the degree of culpability the accused infringer possessed with respect to the issue of patent infringement.*  Although the cases involve different legal doctrines–WBIP v. Kohler involves willful infringement under § 284 and Unwired Planet involves inducement of infringement under § 271(b)–both present that core question of fault.  This post will focus on the issue of fault in the context of Unwired Planet, although its observations about fault are relevant to issues of culpability in the context of enhanced damages determinations.  I’ll focus on the specific issues raised by WBIP in a future post.

*While some folks prefer the terms “scienter,” “mens rea,” or “mental state,” I tend to use  “fault” because patent infringement primarily involves businesses not humans, and businesses don’t really have minds. In addition, the idea of “fault” captures standards (such as strict liability and negligence) that do not really have mental state components.  Terminology matters less than what’s actually going on in the analyses in these opinions, though, so substitute your preferred term as desired.

Unwired Planet v. Apple involved inducement of infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b).  In Global-Tech v. SEB, and reaffirmed in Commil v. Cisco, the Supreme Court held that inducement requires knowledge or willful blindness to the fact that the relevant acts constitute infringement of a patent.  563 U.S. 754, 766 (2011); 135 S.Ct. 1920, 1926 (2015).

Among other subjects raised on appeal, Unwired challenged the district judge’s grant of summary judgment against its § 271(b) inducement of infringement claim.  The district court based its decision on the ground “that no reasonable juror could conclude that Apple was willfully blind because of ‘the strength of Apple’s noninfringement argument.'”  Slip Op. at 18.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated the grant of summary judgment because the “objective strength” of Apple’s position was insufficient to avoid liability for inducement:

Because the district court’s grant of summary judgment was based exclusively on its view of the strength of Apple’s non-infringement argument, we vacate. The Supreme Court’s Global-Tech Appliances and Commil decisions require a showing of the accused infringer’s subjective knowledge as to the underlying direct infringement. The district court’s reliance on the objective strength of Apple’s non-infringement arguments as precluding a finding of induced or contributory infringement was erroneous.

On its face, this statement in Unwired Planet seems inconsistent with the court’s recent holding in Warsaw Orthopedic, an opinion that Dennis wrote about last month.  In Warsaw Orthopedic the Federal Circuit held that the objective unreasonableness of the accused infringer’s position, together with its knowledge of the patents, was a sufficient basis for a jury to conclude that the accused had knowledge of or was willfully blind to the fact that it infringed the patents-in-suit.  See 2016 WL 3124704, *3, *5 (“[H]ere we conclude that there was substantial evidence that MSD’s infringement position was objectively unreasonable and that the jury, based on this evidence, could reasonably have concluded that MSD had knowledge (or was willfully blind to the fact) that it was infringing”).  In other words, while the objective reasonableness of the accused infringer’s position is insufficient to avoid a finding of willful blindness, the objective unreasonableness of the accused infringer’s position is sufficient for a finding of knowledge or willful blindness.

Adding to the potential confusion is an observation that Judge Reyna made in his concurrence in Warsaw Orthopedic: that “the Supreme Court in Commil stated that a defendant lacks the intent for induced infringement where his reading of the claims is both different from the plaintiff’s and reasonable.”  2016 WL 3124704, *6 (the concurrence does not provide a pin cite for this statement, but he’s presumably referencing 135 S.Ct. 1920, 1928 (“In other words, even if the defendant reads the patent’s claims differently from the plaintiff, and that reading is reasonable, he would still be liable because he knew the acts might infringe. Global–Tech requires more.”)).  Although Judge Reyna was making the point that he would resolve the appeal on the ground that the accused infringer had not presented its claim construction to the court, his reading of Commil nevertheless reinforces the idea that a reasonable claim construction would be sufficient to avoid a finding of inducement liability–a conclusion at odds with the Federal Circuit’s statement in Unwired that “the objective strength of Apple’s non-infringement arguments” cannot preclude a finding of induced infringement.

Timing matters: These statements are not as irreconcilable as they seem, however. The critical missing aspect is that of timing.  As the Federal Circuit observed in WBIP, “timing does matter,” Slip Op. at 35 (emphasis in original), a point made in Halo v. Pulse, 136 S.Ct. 1923, 1933, and repeatedly emphasized by Timothy Holbrook in his scholarship and amicus briefing.   Patent infringement almost never consists of just a single act.  Instead, it typically consists of a multitude of acts performed over months or years: the individual acts of making, using, selling, and offering for sale of the patented invention.  Mental states can change and evolve over this time.  Perhaps during early periods, the accused infringer is entirely unaware of the patents-in-suit; later on, it becomes aware and begins to have thoughts about them; still later it is embroiled in litigation and develops sophisticated legal arguments.

Viewed in this light, the court’s holdings in Warsaw and Apple are easily reconciled.  In Warsaw, the court was simply saying that relying on an noninfringement position that is objectively unreasonable allows for a jury to find that the accused possessed the requisite fault.  This makes sense, as a noninfringement position that is objectively unreasonable cannot foreclose a finding of fault regardless of whether that unreasonable position was developed before infringement began or later on during litigation.

On the other hand, the flip is not necessarily true.  Just because an accused infringer develops a reasonable non-infringement position during litigation does not mean that it had a reasonable noninfringement position earlier on.  Logic would indicate, though, that if it had a reasonable noninfringement position earlier on, then it would not possess the requisite degree of fault at that time, given the passage in Commil v. Cisco referenced by Judge Reyna.

The Nature of the Determination of Fault: Wrapped up with the issue of timing is that of the actual determination of knowledge or willful blindness.  It is the patent owner’s burden to prove that the accused infringer possessed the necessary degree of fault, not the accused infringer’s burden to prove that it did not.  “The doctrine of willful blindness requires the patentee to show not only that the accused subjectively believed that there was a high risk of infringement, but also that the accused took deliberate actions to avoid confirming infringement.”  Unwired, Slip Op. at 19.  On this basis, the Federal Circuit observed, Apple might be able to prevail on summary judgment on remand.  When coupled with the reality of temporally evolving mental states, this requirement poses an interesting challenge: the patentee must make out a plausible case for fault at the relevant points in time.  The objective reasonableness of the infringer’s legal position would seem to be relevant to this determination, but the existence of an objectively reasonable legal position at one point in time does not necessarily mean that it applies to other periods of time.  Furthermore, as Prof. Holbrook has observed, the issue of reasonableness falls out once the court issues its ruling on the “correctness” of the position.  If the accused inducer loses on that issue, it can no longer argue that it’s position was “reasonable.”

Thanks to Dennis Crouch, Dmitry Karshtedt, Chris Seaman and Timothy Holbrook for helpful discussions relevant to this post.

GAO: Patent Office Must Define and Improve Patent Quality

Patent

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published two new reports on Patent Office Activities along with the results of a major survey of 2,600 patent examiners.

Regarding patent quality, the GAO suggested that the USPTO’s standard of patent quality should focus solely on the basics: defining “a quality patent as one that would meet the statutory requirements for novelty and clarity, among others, and would be upheld if challenged in a lawsuit or other proceeding.”  However, patent clarity must be an important element of that definition.  The GAO writes:

GAO estimates that nearly 90 percent of examiners always or often encountered broadly worded patent applications, and nearly two-thirds of examiners said that this made it difficult to complete a thorough examination. Without making use of additional tools, such as a glossary of key terms, to improve the clarity of patent applications, USPTO is at risk of issuing patents that do not meet statutory requirements.

The reports were requested by Rep. Goodlatte in his role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.  I expect that Rep. Goodlatte will hold hearings with PTO representatives in the fall to focus on ways to move forward.

 

Guest post: 2016 U.S. Patent Practitioner Trends Part 2 – Removal and Retirement of Patent Practitioners

Patent

By Zachary Kinnaird, Patent Attorney with International IP Law Group, PLLC

Based on my analysis of the USPTO roster data:

  • There were 44,295 registered patent practitioners in the U.S. as of April 2016.
  • After 20 years on the USPTO roster, at least 15%  of practitioners originally registered between 1988 and 1996 are no longer registered as of April 2016.
  • Going back from April 2016, every subsequent year before 1986 shows an additional 2% of patent practitioners are no longer registered.
  • The USPTO either skipped or removed a large number of registration numbers originally to be assigned in 1964, 1966, and 2001 for currently unclear reasons.

Retirement trends based on removals from the USPTO roster

The number of practitioners removed from the USPTO database reveals a practitioner percentage removal trend that can be seen as a retirement estimate for patent practitioners. This trend shows that the longer a practitioner has had a registration number, the more likely they are to have retired, or otherwise been removed, from the roster.

The chart below shows the percentage of patent practitioners who still remain registered on the USPTO roster as a function of each practitioner’s year of registration. The further to the right, the more recently the practitioner earned their registration number.

Graph 1

*Gaps years 1964, 1966 removed as likely outliers as discussed more below

** Value for 2001 shown in red as data for 2001 came from the USPTO Official Gazette rather than from a calculation from the USPTO database. Data for 2001 from USPTO database calculations was an outlier as discussed more below

From the graph above, there appears to be an initial sudden dip at 1996 that suggests that about 15% of practitioners leave the practice after 20 years of being registered agents and attorneys. These numbers stay fairly level for another 10 years on the roster, or back until 1986 before another large dip in the percentage of practitioners still registered. The trend after this first 30 years on the roster is a nearly linearly removal at a rate of approximately 2% a year. This retirement pattern continues until 55 years after initial registration, or 1960 in the above chart.

At the time this data was collected, there were 44,295 individuals in the USPTO database, however there are likely far fewer than this actively filing or prosecuting patents with the USPTO. The percentages of practitioners still on the roster are very likely to be higher than in actual practicing attorneys and agents. Remaining on the roster is relatively costless for a practitioner due to the lack of dues and continuation education requirements. It is likely that many practitioners have effectively retired without yet being removed from the roster. Accordingly, the percentages shown on the above graph are a ceiling of the actual figures of practitioners who are actually still practicing.

Tracking removal rates of registered attorneys from the USPTO roster

The above retirement graph was generated from percentages of practitioners removed from the USPTO database. Finding the percentage of those removed can be a challenge, however, as the USPTO only maintains the current state of the patent bar in its public database and does not publicly provide a list of all practitioners ever registered at the USPTO.

Instead, the Office of Enrollment and Discipline periodically conducts a mandatory survey of active registered practitioners pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 11.11. This survey, in part, determines if the practitioner is still active and wants to remain on the USPTO roster. As noted above, there is essentially no cost to remain on the roster as there are currently no annual dues or continuing education requirements. However, if a practitioner is no longer practicing and either indicates the end of their practice in the survey or does not respond to the survey, the USPTO removes that practitioner from the roster.

The below graph is constructed with the knowledge that practitioners can be removed through this survey system and by assuming that the USPTO assigns numbers in a sequential order. This visualization shows the number of registration numbers removed each year compared to the number of registration numbers initially assigned in that given year. For instance, while the USPTO roster may include 1,210 practitioners who first gained registration numbers in 2015, the first registration number assigned in 2015 (i.e. 73,303) compared to the last registration number assigned in 2015 (i.e. 74,530) suggests that 1,227 registration numbers were actually assigned in 2015 and that some of these 2015 practitioners have already been removed from the database. Carrying out this calculation for each year going back to 1950 yields the graph below.

Graph 2

As noted above, there are unusual red spikes in 1964, 1966, and 2001. The red spikes corresponding to 1964 and 1966 are far out of place and I believe they are likely outliers. The red spike in 2001 IS an outlier. This can be said with confidence based on comparison to number of practitioners found in the USPTO Gazette for the year of 2001. Potential practitioners in the PTO Gazette are listed provisionally to allow time for the public to report any additional information about the practitioners before they formally receive a registration number. 1,853 potential practitioners were listed for 2001 in the USTPO Official Gazette compared to the calculated value difference of 2,697 between the first registration number assigned in 2001 and the last. The corrected graph below reflects the modified value for 2001 based on the Official Gazette listings. Unfortunately, the listing of potential practitioners in the online resources of the Official USPTO Gazette currently only goes back as far as 1995 and can’t be used to find values for 1964 and 1966.

Graph 3

The outlier variation in 2001 is likely due to a conscious choice by the USPTO to jump to a higher registration number for assignment rather than adhere to a generally sequential and quantum assignment of registration numbers. This is likely true for 1966 and 1964 as well. For example, at the end of 1966 the last registration number assigned was 23,099 which is followed by a jump to 24,002 on the very next day numbers were assigned. These gaps suggest that there may have been a USPTO policy at the time to skip blocks of numbers and perhaps start at the next round number in the sequence (e.g. 24,000 in 1967) at the start of a next year.

Data Retrieval Methodology

The USPTO provides both a database for practitioner information as well as a zip file of this data in spreadsheet form that is updated daily. However, the spreadsheet provided by the USPTO does not include the dates of registration as an attorney or agent. Accordingly, the process of retrieving the registration date information from the USPTO online database was automated with web macros to yield the data that is analyzed in this post. As many practitioners have been registered as both patent agents and as patent attorneys, only the date an individual first received a registration number was used for this analysis. For access to the data set being used, or if any errors are noticed, please feel free to reach out by email.

This article is a continuation and extension of my previous analysis on the USPTO database graphing the USPTO attorney and agent database as well as my update to that story as of April 30, 2016.

Editor’s note: Comment moderation policy is in effect.  Excessive or uncivil posts will be deleted without further notice. 

 

BASCOM v. AT&T: Section 101 Jurisprudence Continues to Develop

Patent, ,

By Jason Rantanen

BASCOM Global Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC (Fed. Cir. June 27, 2016) Download Bascom
Panel: Newman (concurring in the result), O’Malley, Chen (author)

Since Alice v. CLS Bank, the Federal Circuit has issued four opinions rejecting a lack of patent eligible subject matter challenge: DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014); Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 2016 WL 2756255 (Fed. Cir. May 12, 2016); Rapid Litigation Management Ltd. v. Cellzdirect, Inc., 2016 WL 3606624 (Fed. Cir. 2016), and BASCOM v. AT&T, with the latter three coming the last few months.  (Many more decisions affirm invalidity on § 101 grounds.)  Each of these opinions is important for understanding the contours of the post-Mayo/Alice patentable subject matter doctrine.   In this post, I’ll summarize BASCOM and examine its treatment of the relationship between steps one and two of the Mayo/Alice framework.

Background: The claimed invention involved in this case is a “system for filtering Internet content.”  Slip Op. at 6.  The patent’s first claim reads:

1. A content filtering system for filtering content retrieved from an Internet computer network by individual controlled access network accounts, said filtering system comprising:

a local client computer generating network access requests for said individual controlled access network accounts;

at least one filtering scheme;

a plurality of sets of logical filtering elements; and

a remote ISP server coupled to said client computer and said Internet computer
network, said ISP server associating each said network account to at least one filtering scheme and at least one set of filtering elements, said ISP server further receiving said network access requests from said client computer and executing said associated filtering scheme utilizing said associated set of logical filtering elements.

At the district court, AT&T moved to dismiss BASCOM’s complaint on the ground that the asserted claims were invalid under 35 US.C. § 101.  “AT&T argued that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of ‘filtering content,’ ‘filtering internet content,’ or ‘determining who gets to see what,” and that none of the limitations “transforms the abstract idea of filtering  content into patent-eligible subject matter because they do no more than recite routine and conventional activities performed by generic computer components.”  Id. at 8.  The district court agreed with AT&T, finding that “the claims were directed to the abstract idea of ‘filtering content’ because ‘content provided on the Internet is not fundamentally different from content observed, read, and interacted with through other mediums like books, magazines, television, or movies,”  Id. at 9, and that “no individual limitation was inventive because each limitation, in isolation, was a ‘well known, generic computer component[]’ or a standard filtering mechanism.”  Id.  Nor were the limitations in combination inventive because “[f]iltering software, apparently composed of filtering schemes and filtering elements, was well-known in the prior art” and “using ISP servers to filter content was well-known to practitioners.”  Id., quoting district court.

“Ordered combination of limitations” can provide the “inventive concept”: On appeal, the Federal Circuit reversed based on the second step of the Mayo/Alice framework.   Critical to its conclusion that the claims were directed to patent eligible subject matter was the court’s focus on the particular arrangement of generic and conventional components in the claims.

“An inventive concept that transforms the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention must be significantly more than the abstract idea itself, and cannot be simply an instruction to implement or apply the abstract idea on a computer.”  Slip Op. at 14.  Under the court’s step two analysis, the specific limitations were sufficient to establish eligibility on the limited record before the court–not because the limitations themselves provided that “inventive concept,” but because the arrangement of those elements did.  “The inventive concept inquiry requires more than recognizing that each claim element, by itself, was known in the art.  As is the case here, an inventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces.”  Slip Op. at 15.  On the limited record before the court, the specific method of filtering content claimed in the patent “cannot be said, as a matter of law, to have been conventional or generic.”  Id. at 16.

The relationship between Mayo/Alice Step One and Step Two:  The court’s step one analysis is, unfortunately, somewhat muddled.  The court first states that the claims are directed to an abstract idea, that of filtering content on the Internet, id. at 12, then shifts to the conclusion that the claims present a “close call,” requiring progression to step two.  Id. at 13 (“This case, unlike Enfish, presents a “close call[] about how to characterize what the claims are directed to….Here, in contrast, the claims and their specific limitations do not readily lend themselves to a step-one finding that they are directed to a nonabstract idea.  We therefore defer our consideration of the specific claim limitations’ narrowing effect for step two.”)

Ultimately, the choice between claims that are clearly directed to an abstract idea and those that are “close calls” may not matter.  If a claim is either unambiguously directed to an abstract idea or is a “close call,” the result is that the claim fails Mayo/Alice step one and the analysis proceeds to step two, the search for an inventive concept.  Viewed in this light, resolving disputes over the articulation of the abstract idea isn’t necessary as long as it fits in the “close call” category.

On the other hand, the articulation of the abstract idea in step does matter because it provides an important ingredient for step two.  Here, the court drew upon the articulation of the “abstract idea” as “filtering content on the Internet” to conduct its step two analysis.  “The claims do not merely recite the abstract idea of filtering content along with the requirement to perform it on the Internet, or to perform it on a set of generic computer components.  Such claims would not contain an inventive concept.”  Id. at 16.  With that articulation of the abstract idea in hand, it is relatively easy to see the method of filtering claimed in claim 1 as providing the necessary “inventive concept.”  The articulation of the abstract idea as “filtering content on the Internet” also provides the foundation for the court’s analysis of the invention here as compared with its previous decisions on patent eligible subject matter.

But if one were to articulate the abstract idea as being “controlling access to content by using centrally-held accounts with different permissions,” it might be significantly more difficult for the claims to pass the step two analysis because that idea is much closer to the inventive concept described by the court.  “The inventive concept described and claimed in the ‘606 patent is the installation of a filtering tool at a specific location, remote from the end-users, with customizable filtering features specific to each end user.”   Id. at 15.  To be sure, it would be harder for such an articulation to fail the Mayo/Alice step 1 analysis, but it’s not immediately clear to me that it would.

Judge Newman’s Concurrence: Concurring in the result, Judge Newman wrote separately “to urge a more flexible approach to the determination of patent eligibility, for the two-step protocol for ascertaining whether a patent is for an “abstract idea” is not always necessary to resolve patent disputes.”  Newman concurrence at 2.  Judge Newman’s concurrence, while raising the academic question of whether there is actually an “abstract ideas” limit on the § 101 categories or instead whether questions of abstractness are fully resolved by application of §§ 102, 103 and 112, does not really offer much in the way of a path forward under current patent law.    To the extent Judge Newman is suggesting that district courts should be able to deny 12(b)(6) motions when there are evidentiary disputes, then I would agree.  But if she is suggesting something else, it is not clear to me how  proposal would fit into the procedural constraints of Rule 12(b)(6) or current § 101 jurisprudence.