Tag Archives: Claim Construction

An Update on Patent Reform 2015

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by Dennis Crouch

The current outlook for legislative patent reform in 2015 is not so much whether reforms will be enacted but instead how far they will go.  In a Chamber of Commerce IP event on November 18, Representative Goodlatte and Senator Coons will discuss their outlook on IP legislation in the new term.  Goodlatte has championed strong legislative patent reforms that include a presumption of attorney fee shifting, broadening of post-issuance review proceedings, heightened pleading requirements, and patent ownership transparency.  Senator Coons has also favored patent reform as well as sponsoring bills to nationalize trade secret law.

Emerging as a leading Senate Republican on patent reform is Senator Cornyn of Texas. Julian Hattem (The Hill) quotes Sen. Cornyn as saying that the 2015 Senate will “absolutely” pass legislative patent reforms to address the problem of “patent trolls.”  In 2014, Senators Cornyn and Schumer drafted a compromise bill that was less extreme than the Goodlatte version (that passed the House).  However, that compromise was never strongly supported by members of either party.  For his part, President Obama appears to be willing and ready to sign the Goodlatte bill if approved by Congress.

In the longer game, members of both parties see these patent reforms as potentially offering experimental results for major tort reform initiatives.  The test of success is whether the reforms limit the enforcement of “bad” patents while upholding both the value of “good” patents and the research-incentives offered by the patent system.

With Democrats out of the majority in the Senate, it is unclear whether patent reformers will now push for reforms that go beyond the recent legislative proposals.  A major open issue is that of the short nine-month window for filing of post-grant review proceedings.  A simple proposal would extend that window to 18-months post issuance and additionally open a second window to challenge very old patents.  In the past, I have proposed a USPTO claim-construction proceeding that could be a simple and cost-effective tool for formally establishing claim scope.

Patent Reform 2015: Republican Agenda

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by Dennis Crouch

Although the Washington DC politics of patent law is somewhat confusing, the divide on tort reform is much more clear and the pending patent reform legislation in Congress is largely tort reform (but with a focus on patents).  The Republican led House of Representatives passed the Goodlatte Innovation Act in 2013 (H.R.3309), but Democrats in the Senate have stymied the Bill’s progress despite support from the White House.  With Senate control now in Republican hands, I expect that a revised version of the Innovation Act will be able to pass through both houses of congress in 2015 and be signed by President Obama.

Meanwhile, changes in the patent system since 2013 have somewhat tempered demands for reform. Particularly the Supreme Court took strong pro-defendant positions in Alice Corp (patent eligibility), Nautilus (indefiniteness), and Octane Fitness (attorney fees) and, at the same time, the new post-issuance review proceedings have proven to be effective mechanisms for challenging patents in parallel to court actions. Further, it is likely that Supreme Court will raise pleading standards for patent cases (by eliminating Form 18) this calendar year as part of a larger reform of the rules of civil procedure. Likely as a result of  all of these factors, new infringement lawsuits are down as is the market-value of patents.  To be clear though, pro-reformers are still calling for reforms and this may be low-hanging fruit for Republican lawmakers.

H.R. 3309 as passed includes:

  • Substantially raising the pleading standards in patent cases – well above Iqbal and Twombly;
  • Creating presumption of fee shifting and ability to join ‘interested’ parties to pay fees when a losing-patentee is under-capitalized;
  • Severely limit pre-claim-construction discovery;
  • Partially limiting the availability of pre-suit demand letters for proving willfulness when seeking punitive (willfulness) damages;
  • Requiring transparancy of ownership;
  • Allowing for stays of customer-lawsuits in certain situations;
  • Narrowing the estoppel provision for Post-Grant Review filings; and
  • Codifying double patenting.

Indications are that President Obama’s administration and USPTO Director Nominee Michelle Lee support these changes (with some modification) — making this an area of early bipartisan cooperation in the new Congressional term.

The Patentee’s Risk of Multiple-Jeopardy

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In Blonder-Tongue Labs., Inc. v. Univ. of Ill., 402 U.S. 313 (1971), the Supreme Court precluded a patentee from re-asserting a patent that had been found invalid in a separate suit.  Prior to that case, a patentee who lost on validity against one party was not generally precluded from asserting the same patent against another party.  The doctrinal hook in Blonder-Tongue is known as non-mutual collateral estoppel and it allows a new-challenger to take advantage of the success of a prior-challenger. In a new decision, Judge Bryson has applied the doctrine mid-stream to quickly conclude a pending lawsuit by simply precluding the patentee from continuing to assert the patent after another court has ruled it invalid.  DietGoal v. Chipotle, 12-cv-764 (E.D.Tex. 2014).

Risk of Multiple Jeopardy: The case here highlights the difficulty faced by patent assertion entities seeking to enforce their patents against multiple parties.  Each accused infringer has the right to independently challenge a patent’s validity. But, if the patentee loses even one of those challenges, then the patentee will be estopped from further asserting the patent.  Importantly, an invalidity finding in one case operates to shut down both pending and future assertions of the patent.  Prior to the America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA), many patent enforcers had begun joining multiple defendants into single lawsuits and that setup-at least procedurally-helped patentees avoid the multiple-jeopardy risk.  However, the AIA has forced a separation of these lawsuits in a way that again highlights the one-way risk.  Under this new system, parallel infringement actions (same patent, different defendants) are now more likely to be heard in different venues and before different judges in a way that makes alternative outcomes more likely.  And, the rise in post-issuance challenges further removes the risk-decision from the patent holder’s discretion.

Here: Federal Circuit Judge Bryson is sitting by designation in DietGoal v. Chipotle.  The infringement litigation was filed in back in 2012 and involves U.S. Patent No. 6,585,516 that covers a computerized meal planning tool. Claim 2 of the patent is listed below:

2. A system of computerized meal planning, comprising:
a User Interface;
a Database of food objects; and
a Meal Builder, which displays on the User Interface meals from the Database, and wherein a user can change content of said meals and view the resulting meals’ impact on customized eating goals.

The same patent has been asserted in 60 other recent infringement lawsuits.  Importantly, in one-such-case – DietGoal v. Bravo Media – the district court judge found all claims of the patent invalid as impermissibly claiming an abstract idea.  In that decision, Judge Engelmayer (S.D.N.Y.) wrote:

[T]he claims of the ’516 Patent recite nothing more than the abstract concept of selecting meals for the day, according to one’s particular dietary goals and food preferences.

Following that decision in favor of Bravo, the defendants here (Chipotle) asked Judge Bryson to apply issue preclusion to end its case as well.

Collateral estoppel – also known as issue preclusion – applies to bar a party from re-litigating certain issues.  There are typically four elements that must be met before estoppel will attach:

  1. The issue sought to be precluded from relitigation is identical to the issue decided in the earlier proceeding;
  2. The issue was actually litigated in the former proceeding;
  3. The determination on the issue in the prior action was necessary to the resulting judgment in that case; and
  4. The person against whom collateral estoppel is asserted had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the prior action.

Here, Judge Bryson found that all four of those elements had been met with regard to patent-ineligibility as decided in the prior Bravo case.

In Blonder-Tongue, the Supreme Court noted that estoppel might not apply in “those relatively rare instances where the courts wholly failed to grasp the technical subject matter and issues in suit.” DietGoal here argued, that this was one of those relatively rare instances — especially since the district court in Bravo failed to conduct a claim construction before making its determination. However, according to Judge Bryson, DietGoal failed to indicate how claim construction would have been important to the 101 analysis.  Judge Bryson also cited the several Federal Circuit decisions that

On Appeal: The Bravo decision is on appeal. That said, an important element of collateral estoppel is that it applies after the original district court final judgment – even if an appeal is pending and even if the “later” case was well underway at the time of the prior decision.  Now, assuming that DietGoal can keep this case alive (likely via appeal) until the Bravo appeal is decided, and assuming that DietGoal wins on appeal (which I suspect is unlikely), then Judge Bryson would be forced to reconsider the case on its merits.

Guest Post by Prof. Shubha Ghosh: Are South African Yellow Canaries a Question of Law or Fact?

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Guest Post by Professor Shubha Ghosh.  Prof. Ghosh is the Vilas Research Fellow & George Young Bascom Professor in Business Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he is also the Associate Director of the Initiatives for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship (INSITE).  

I was fortunate to be able to attend oral argument in Teva v Sandoz before the Supreme Court on October 15. At issue was a highly technical issue at the intersection of civil procedure and patent law: Is the standard of appellate review for patent claim construction de novo or clearly erroneous? The Justices’ engagement with this dry, but fundamental, question extended from hypos about bus crashes and South African Yellow Canaries (don’t ask) to elusive distinctions between facts and law in construing scientific terms like “average molecular weight.”

While the discussion was lively, the big question of what is the appropriate methodology for claim construction was avoided. The Federal Circuit presumably answered that question in Phillips v. AWH, but the Supreme Court has never addressed that issue. Even a lively oral argument cannot cure the failure to address claim construction methodology. I will address that problem at the end of this post after setting forth these highlights.

(1) Justice Alito stated the issue as one of whether a patent is analogous to a statute (for which there is no deference to legislative facts) or to a private contract (for which there is deference on factfinding).  That may be just restating the question, but gives some indication on how some of the justices are approaching the matter. The question of right analogy is a bit of a red herring. Which analogy you choose depends on how you view the mix of law and fact in patent claims.

(2) Justice Roberts came out clearly, from my listening, on the side of patent as statute and emphasized the importance of uniformity (and implicitly the need to avoid forum shopping).  Go Federal Circuit!  Justice Scalia was hard to read although he did make a comparison between a patent and a deed. Also, given his opinion in Medimmune in 2007, he may come out on the side of a patent as a statute.

(3) Justice Breyer came out on the side of 52(a) and pushed back on Sandoz’ argument that the Court had already resolved the question of deference in Markman by concluding that claim construction is a matter of law. Justice Ginsburg pointed out the different context of the 7th Amendment in Markman. I think there were at least four Justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Kennedy) who seemed to be skeptical about special rules regarding fact finding for Markman hearings (which is one way of phrasing Sandoz’ argument). In addition, Justice Scalia’s strict constructionism would lead him to agree with Justice Breyer. Justice Sotomayor’s questions were more searching, but indicated some skepticism with Sandoz’ position.

(4) Even when there was sympathy for the Teva argument, there seemed to be some pushback on how to separate subsidiary facts from legislative facts (a big distinction for Teva and for the SG).  I did not find a completely great answer although the SG brief and argument came close to a methodology for parsing facts.

Based on this reading of the oral arguments, I would predict a victory for Teva on the 52(a) issue with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, Kennedy and possibly Scalia or Sotomayor voting for a reversal. The open question is how to distinguish facts and law in patent claims. This question may just be left for another day.

Looming in the background of this case is the issue of how claim construction should be done. Although Philips offers the accepted methodology (and one that seems to have reduced the reversal rate on claim construction by the Federal Circuit), the Supreme Court has neither endorsed the decision nor addressed how district courts should construe claims. But the law/fact question is intimately connected with the methodology of construction.

Treating claim construction as purely a question of law is consistent with the plain meaning approach to construing claims, as endorsed by the Philips decision. The more courts rely on sources other than the words of a claim, such as prosecution history or expert witnesses, the more fact-based claim construction becomes. It is no coincidence that Teva in its arguments emphasized the role of experts and prosecution history in construing the meaning of “average molecular weight.” A ruling in favor of Teva would suggest that claim construction relies more heavily on factors extrinsic to the language of the claims, a position different from the plain meaning approach of Philips.

Of course, the ruling in Teva will just be the start and perhaps the first step in the Supreme Court examining claim construction methodology head on.

 

Teva v. Sandoz and Claim Construction Deference

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By Dennis Crouch

In Teva v. Sandoz, the Supreme Court is focused-in on the appellate rules that should apply to claim construction decisions. Namely, if a district court makes factual conclusions that underpin a claim construction determination, should those factual conclusions be given deference on appeal or instead reviewed de novo on appeal. The Federal Circuit’s practice is to follow the latter approach while Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a)(6) suggests the former.

The issue as presented to the Supreme Court:

Whether a district court’s factual finding in support of its construction of a patent claim term may be reviewed de novo, as the Federal Circuit requires (and as the panel explicitly did in this case), or only for clear error, as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a) requires.

Here, the district court may several explicit factual findings, including resolution of conflicting expert testimony regarding how a figure should be interpreted and how one of ordinary skill in the art would understand the term “average molecular weight” in the context of size-exclusion chromatography.  These findings served as precursors to the lower court’s ultimate clam construction determination. On appeal, the Federal Circuit expressly reviewed and rejected those determination — but gave them no deference in the appeal. I should note here that there is disagreement about what should count as a factual finding — the PTO suggests that anything that relies at all upon patent or prosecution related documentation is legal textual analysis and not fact finding. Teva agrees that deference should be reserved to “classic fact­finding,” but that would include factfinding that also draws some inferences from patent documents in conjunction with other evidence.

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments, and the transcript is available online. In the case, Rising Star William Jay of Goodwin Procter argued for the patentee Teva who won at the district court but lost on appeal at the Federal Circuit. Carter Phillips of Sidley argued for Sandoz and Ginger Anders represented the Solicitor’s Office as Amicus.

Much of the of debate focused on the best analogy for patent claims — should they be interpreted as we interpret statutes (fully de novo review)? Or should they instead be interpreted as we do contracts (deference for underlying factual conclusions)? Jay attempted to argue that statutes are different because they are always designed to be read by the general public whereas patents are focused on those skilled in the art.

JUSTICE ALITO: If a patent is like public law, if it’s like a statute or like a rule, then factual findings regarding the meaning of that patent are not entitled to clear error review. . . Now, on the other hand, if a patent is private law, if it’s like a deed or if it’s like a contract, then Rule 52(a) comes into play. . . .

MR. JAY: Terms of art in statutes, Justice Alito…are nonetheless written to be read by the general public. And … when they have a legal meaning, the determination of that legal meaning is still a question of law. . . .

I think when you’re interpreting a statute that it s generally clear at least what the right frame of reference is Now in the in the patent case what the frame of reference is is itself a question of fact as this Court said in Graham v John Deere. Ascertaining the level of skill in the art who is the skilled artisan who is this patent written for that is itself a factual question and then figuring out what that what that person knows is also a factual question. . . .

MR. PHILLIPS: But actually, I think Markman
answered that, because I think Markman recognized that this is a public document that is going to be binding on third parties, and that therefore ought to be construed as a matter of law in order to ensure the stare decisis component of it.

Justice Breyer seemingly announced his position in favor of deference:

JUSTICE BREYER: And [the direct viewing of witness testimony], I think, is a very powerful reason for saying in a technical case, don’t overturn the judge’s factual findings whether they are ­­ particularly scientific matters, but no particularly here ­­ unless those three judges who will not even read the whole record normally and certainly won’t hear those witnesses, don’t let them do it unless they are convinced that it is clearly erroneous. Now, that’s the argument, and I would like to say that’s different from a statute.

Of course, in this particular case there was no live testimony for the district court Markman “hearing”, but rather only submissions in briefs and declarations.

A second analogy proffered is to the patent issue of obviousness that is also a question of law but is generally based upon underlying factual findings.  To that, Sandoz response is largely that claim construction should be considered unique.  On that point, a number of Justices seemed to question the fundamental Markman decision and its impact on Seventh Amendment rights.

Policy goals at stake: Uniformity and Consistency?

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: If you and the government can’t agree, why should we defer to a district court? Why don’t we defer, as has been done now forever, to the Federal Circuit and let them review these things de novo? . . .

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: [With deference,] two different district courts construing the same patent could come out to opposite results based on a subsidiary factual finding, and neither of those would be clearly erroneous, and yet on a public patent that is going to bind a lot of other people, people won’t know what to do.

. . . .

MR. PHILLIPS: It’s not ­­ it’s not worth the candle because all you’re going to do is create a cottage industry of trial lawyers fighting with the judge about which bucket some particular evidence fits into.

In my view, Mr. Phillips is right that the relative impact of deference for factual findings is relatively small.  The larger potential impacts will be seen if the court remarks more generally on what should count as a factual finding; whether claim construction methodology should be more aligned with statutory construction vs contract construction; and how the factual findings for claim construction might impact later parallel jury determinations.

Update: Using IPR to Manipulate the Stock Price of Patentees Which Won in District Court

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The creativity of American lawyers never ceases to amaze.  I’ve heard of variations on this theme:  using an IPR to coerce payment, a license, or something from the patentee.  Variation on the theme:

A third party sees that a patentee has won a big judgment, defending its patent against a charge of invalidity.  The third party then cobbles together an IPR petition based upon the arguments that failed in the district court, relying upon the lower burden of proof and broader claim construction that will apply in IPR, and sends it to the patentee with a note:  “pay us or we’ll file this.”  This was discussed a few months back here.

A third party uses IPR as a tool to manipulate stock price:  sell the stock short and then file the IPR.  Or, it sees the patentee is in litigation and says, “give us a license (which we’ll turn around and use to license the defendants) or we’ll file an IPR.”  A story about that allegedly happening is here.

Gotta love America.

The ethics of this are fascinating:  it may be that the OED could be brought in to show that the IPR was filed for an improper purpose and nip it in the bud.  But that’s probably a long shot, given the right to petition and what-not.  Perhaps Congress limiting standing in IPRs to competitors?  It’s too early for me to think in depth about a creative solution to this creative problem.

Doctrine of Equivalents: What Elements Are you Narrowing?

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Capture2Millipore v. AllPure (Fed. Cir. 2014)

Patent cases are incredibly expensive to litigate.  However, in a series of recent cases courts have appeared more willing to dismiss cases on summary judgment or even on the pleadings.  This case follows that trend with a holding that the defendant does not infringe the asserted patent claims — neither directly nor under the doctrine of equivalents.  In a prior generation patentees could typically get to a jury with an allegation of infringement doctrine of equivalents. However, the court has simultaneously tightened the rules for DOE infringement and loosened the rules summary judgment — result being that infringement under the doctrine of equivalents is now regularly a summary judgment issue.

Millipore’s U.S. Patent No. 6,032,543 covers an aseptic system designed to add & remove fluid from a container without contamination.  The asserted claims require, inter alia, a “removable, replaceable transfer member . . . comprising a holder, a seal for sealing said aperture, a hypodermic needle . . . wherein the seal has a first [bellows-shaped] end . . . and a second [self sealing membrane] end.” Now, it turns out that the accused AllPure TAKEone industrial aseptic sampling system has all these elements – a holder, a seal with the bellow and membrane ends, and the needle.  In addition all of these parts are removable and replaceable.

Capture

AllPure’s key difference from the patented claim is that the collection of these parts are not removable as a unit but rather may only be removed by dis-assembly.  In construing the claims, the district court wrote: ““the [remove] implies movement or separation of something as a whole, whereas [disassemble] implies deconstruction. . . What Millipore characterizes as removal of a transfer member from the magazine part is, in fact, disassembly of a transfer member.”  Based upon that characterization of the patent and the accused device, District Court Judge Woodlock (D. Mass) found that the claims were not infringed.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed — finding that the claimed “removable” transfer member requires that the transfer member be removable as a unit.

We agree with AllPure and the district court. If a transfer member does not exist when the device is disassembled, as even Millipore’s counsel admitted, then there is no genuine issue of material fact over whether the TAKEONE device contains a “removable, replaceable  transfer member” as is literally required by claim 1.

Doctrine of Equivalents: Section 271 of the patent act identifies an infringer as someone who “without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention.”  Although the “patented invention” is defined by patent claims, courts have long allowed patentees to enforce their exclusive rights to stop activity that is just-outside the literal scope of the claims. This doctrine of equivalents (DOE) has been with us for over 150 years  See Winans v. Denmead, 56 U.S. 330 (1853)(‘The exclusive right to the thing patented is not secured, if the public are at liberty to make substantial copies of it, varying its form or proportions.’).  However, the doctrine has been substantially limited by the all-elements-rule, Warner-Jenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chem. Co., 520 U.S. 17 (1997), prosecution history estoppel, Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., 535 U.S. 722 (2002), and the doctrine of vitiation. see Wright Medical Technology, Inc. v. Osteonics Corp., 122 F.3d 1440 (Fed. Cir. 1997).

Narrowing Amendment Estoppel: In this case (as in most patents), the applicant had amended its claims during prosecution following a rejection by the patent office examiner to specify the portions of the seal (bellow-shaped and membrane ends).  Although at the time the applicant also made a broadening amendment, this particular amendment was seen as narrowing and designed to recite limitations not found in the prior art.  In particular, following the amendment the patentee argued that “none of the references show or disclose a seal formed like the present one.”  A narrowing amendment is seen as a no-no for the doctrine of equivalents since allowing DOE would essentially allow the patentee to regain patent scope that had been given-up during the prosecution process.  Under Festo, a narrowing amendment during prosecution creates a rebuttable presumption of prosecution history estoppel (PHE) with the result of estopping the patentee from claiming equivalents (DOE) to recapture the narrowed scope.  Here, the appellate panel found that presumption had not been overcome and thus that the patentee was estopped from claiming equivalents.

Narrowing of Sub-Assembly = Narrowing of Whole Assembly: A problem with the defendant’s argument here (and what Judge Prost failed to explain) is the linkage between the narrowing amendment and the asserted equivalents.  In particular, the narrowing amendment added limitations to the definition of the seal sub-assembly but the claimed equivalent was focused on the nature of the whole accused assembly as being disassemblable rather than removable as claimed. The only clue offered by the court is one phrase indicating that the amendment “narrows the seal limitation, which in turn narrows the transfer member limitation.”

Hierarchy of Elements: The battle over a hierarchy of limitations is common in modern doctrine of equivalents. Typically, the battle plays out in terms of the all-elements rule that requires the accused infringer practice each element of the asserted claim either literally or by equivalent.  For patentees, this type of equivalents is typically easier to prove when each “element” is seen as a grouping of limitations – such as the “removable, replaceable transfer member” – and defendants typically look to further granularize the invention so that the “removable” limitation itself would be an element that must satisfy the function-way-result test.   In this case – involving prosecution history estoppel – the patentee would have been better off with the more granularized framework in order to logically separate the “removable” limitation from the narrowed seal limitations.  However, the appellate court glosses-over all of this analysis in its short decision with the unfortunate result of leaving district courts to do the same.

Important Damages Opinion: VirnetX v. Cisco and Apple

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By Jason Rantanen

VirnetX, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2014)  Virnetx v Cisco
Panel: Prost (author) and Chen

Plaintiffs VirnetX and Science Applications International Corporation obtained a successful verdict against Apple based on infringement by its Facetime and VPN On Demand products.  The two accused products are programs that run on Apple’s iOS platforms (e.g.: iPhones, iPads, iMacs, MacBooks, etc.).  FaceTime is a videoconferencing platform (similar to Skype) and VPN On Demand is a feature that allows iOS users to establish secure virtual private networks.  The patents involved were Nos. 6,502,135 and 7,490,151, which were asserted with respect to VPN On Demand, and 7,418,504 and 7,921,211, which were asserted against FaceTime.   The jury found the four patents were valid and infringed, awarding damages of $368,160,000.  Apple appealed.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit upheld the jury verdict of no invalidity and infringement as to most of the ‘135 and ‘151 claims (i.e.: the ones being asserted against VPN On Demand).  However, it reversed as to a doctrine-of-equivalents finding on one claim of the ‘151 and as to claim construction of a term in the ‘504 and ‘211 patents (i.e.: the ones being asserted against Facetime), thus resulting in a remand as to those claims.

The most important legal aspect of the court’s opinion, however, relates to damages.  At trial, VirnetX’s expert offered three reasonable royalty theories: one that began with the lowest sales price of each iOS device containing the accused feature and applying a 1% royalty to that base, and two that relied on the “Nash Bargaining Solution,” a mathematical theorem proved by Nobel Laureate John Nash.

“Smallest Salable Unit”: A key issue in calculating the infringement damages for complex technological products is whether it is appropriate to use the value of the entire device in the damages calculation.  Generally speaking it is not appropriate to do so: “when claims are drawn to an individual component of a multi-component product, it is the exception, not the rule, that damages may be based upon the value of the multi-component product.”  Slip Op. at 27.  Rather, “‘[a] patentee may assess damages based on the entire market value of the accused product only where the patented feature creates the basis for customer demand or substantially creates the value of the component parts.'” Id., quoting Versata Software, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 717 F.3d 1255, 1268 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (emphasis added by court).  This is due to the general requirement that damages must be actually attributable to the infringing features within a reasonable degree of precision.

However, there is a line of cases suggesting that royalties may be based off of the “smallest salable patent-practicing unit.”  It was this line of cases that the district court presumably drew upon when it issued the relevant jury instruction:

In determining a royalty base, you should not use the value of the entire apparatus or product unless either: (1) the patented feature creates the basis for the customers’ demand for the product, or the patented feature substantially creates the value of the other component parts of the product; or (2) the product in question constitutes the smallest saleable unit containing the patented feature.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit held that the “smallest salable unit” case law does not mean that “when the smallest salable unit is used as the royalty base, there is necessarily no further constraint on the selection of the base.”  Id. at 28.  Rather, “the smallest salable unit approach was intended to produce a royalty base much more closely tied to the claimed invention than the entire market value of the accused products.” Id. at 29.  Thus,

“Where the smallest salable unit is, in fact, a multi-component product containing several non-infringing features with no relation to the patented feature (as VirnetX claims it was here), the patentee must do more to estimate what portion of the value of that product is attributable to the patented technology. To hold otherwise would permit the entire market value exception to swallow the rule of apportionment.”

Id.  Since the VirnetX’s expert relied on the iOS devices as the “‘smallest salable units,’ without attempting to apportion the value attributable to the VPN On Demand and Facetime features,” the legal error was not harmless.  Put another way, VirnetX sought to have the jury use the sales price of an iPhone when calculating infringement of its patents that covered two specific components of that product, without demonstrating that those components drove customer demand for the phones.

Royalty Base * Royalty Rate Theory:  For similar reasons, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling to allow the expert’s testimony that used the sales price of iOS devices as the royalty base.  The accused products included both hardware and software components; the expert “made no attempt to separate software from hardware, much less to separate the FaceTime software from other valuable software components.”  Slip Op. at 31.  This was particularly problematic, since in his Nash Bargaining Solution approaches, the expert did attempt to break out the patentable contributions to the devices.  More, “a patentee’s obligation to apportion damages only to the patented features does not end with the identification of the smallest salable unit if that unit still contains significant unpatented features.”  Id. at 32.  Thus, it did not matter that Apple did not sell FaceTime separately on many of its iOS products: 

There is no “necessity-based exception to the entire market value rule.” Id. at 70. On the contrary, a patentee must be reasonable (though may be approximate) when seeking to identify a patent-practicing unit, tangible or intangible, with a close relation to the patented feature.

Id.  Apple also challenged the expert’s 1% royalty rate, which relied on six allegedly comparable licenses and VirnetX’s “policy” of licensing its patents for 1-2%.  The Federal Circuit concluded that reliance on the six challenged licenses was permissible.

Nash Bargaining Solution Theories: In addition to its ruling on the “smallest salable unit” issue, the Federal Circuit also rejected the invocation of the Nash Bargaining Solution as a model for reasonable royalty damages.  As described by the court, this theorem states that “under the conditions stated in the premises, where two person bargain over a matter, there is a ‘solution’…in which ‘each bargainer get[s] the same money profit.”  (The Nash Bargaining Solution).  The Nash Bargaining Solution is invoked to support the argument that the parties would have split between themselves the incremental profit associated with the patent technology.

Here, VirnetX’s expert used the Nash Bargaining Solution to support royalty rate that allocated 45% of the profits from the Facetime feature to VirtnetX.  (For these calculations, the expert used a much lower valuation of the feature than in the first approach discussed above).

The Federal Circuit held that the Nash Bargaining Solution may not be invoked “without sufficiently establishing that the premises of the theorem actually apply to the facts of the case at hand.”  Id. at 38.  That was not done here; rather, the use of the Nash Solution was as much an inappropriate “rule of thumb” as the “25 percent rule of thumb” rejected in Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 632 F.3d 1292, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2011):

The Nash theorem arrives at a result that follows from a certain set of premises. It itself asserts nothing about what situations in the real world fit those premises. Anyone seeking to invoke the theorem as applicable to a particular situation must establish that fit, because the 50/50 profit-split result is proven by the theorem only on those premises. [The expert] did not do so. This was an essential failing in invoking the Solution.

Slip Op. at 38-39.  Indeed, “even if an expert could identify all of the factors that would cause negotiating parties to deviate from the 50/50 baseline in a particular case, the use of this methodology would nevertheless run the significant risk of inappropriately skewing the jury’s verdict.”  Id.

Is VPN Software Patent Eligible?

Patent, , ,

VirnetX v. Cisco and Apple (Fed. Cir. 2014)

An E.D. Texas jury sided with the patentee VirnetX — finding that the four asserted patents are not-invalid and that Apple’s VPN-On-Demand and FaceTime products infringe.  The jury then awarded $350 million in damages.  On appeal, Apple presented a number of winning arguments that, in the end, result in only a partial victory because some of the claims remain valid and infringed.  After altering claim construction of the term “secure communication link”, the jury will re-determine whether FaceTime infringes and recalculate damages.

Before getting into the merits (in a separate post), we might pause to consider the subject matter eligibility of asserted claim 1 of Patent No. 7,418,504:

1. A system for providing a domain name service for establishing a secure communication link, the system comprising:
a domain name service system configured
to be connected to a communication network,
to store a plurality of domain names and corresponding network addresses,
to receive a query for a network address, and
to comprise an indication that the domain name service system supports establishing a secure communication link.

At a high level of abstraction, the invention is designed to implement private communication which, at that generalized level would likely be seen as an abstract idea.  The particular implementation steps included in the claim here are themselves written in broad functional language whose implementation were well known and conventional aspects of DNS systems as of the 1998 application date.  Now, the court does not sua sponte raise the 101 issue here and so we do not know the answer.

Interval Licensing v. AOL: Post-Nautilus Indefiniteness

Patent, , ,

By Jason Rantanen

Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2014) Interval v AOL
Panel: Taranto and Chen (author)*

One of the most frequent criticisms of Nautilius v. Biosig is that it simply provides a  general standard (Section 112 ¶2 requires that “a patent’s claims, viewed in light of the specification and prosecution history, inform those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention with reasonable certainty” ) and fails to offer any substantive discussion of what this meant.  In this post-Nautilius opinion affirming the district court’s ruling of indefiniteness, Judge Chen provides some of that guidance when it comes to words of degree.

Background. Interval owns the two patents-in-suit, Nos. 6,034,652 and 6,788,314, that claim priority back to 1996.  These patents are directed to a system that “acquires data from a content provider, schedules the display of the content data, generates images from the content data, and then displays the images on a device.”  The system does not simply initiate images on the display device, however.  Rather, almost all of the asserted claims state that the images are displayed “in an unobtrusive manner that does not distract a user.”  The idea is that the images will occupy the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of the display device while not interfering with their primary interaction with the device.  The main issue on appeal was whether this “unobtrusive manner” language was indefinite.

Representative claim 1 of the ‘314 patent (with emphasis added):

1. A method for engaging the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device, comprising the steps of:
providing one or more sets of content data to a content display system associated with the display device and located entirely in the same physical location as the display device;
providing to the content display system a set of instructions for enabling the content display system to selectively display, in an unobtrusive manner that does not distract a user of the display device or an apparatus associated with the display device from a primary interaction with the display device or apparatus, an image or images generated from a set of content data; and
auditing the display of sets of content data by the content display system;
wherein the one or more sets of content data are selected from a plurality of sets of content data, each set being provided by an associated content provider, wherein each associated content provider is located in a different physical location than at least one other content provider and each content provider provides its content data to the content display system independently of each other content provider and without the content data being aggregated at a common physical location remote from the content display system prior to being provided to the content display system, and wherein for each set the respective content provider may provide scheduling instructions tailored to the set of content data to control at least one of the duration, sequencing, and timing of the display of said image or images generated from the set of content data.

Interval sued AOL, Apple, Google, and Yahoo for infringement.  In its claim construction order, the district court held the “in an unobtrusive manner” language indefinite under the pre-Nautilius standard, thus rendering invalid most of the asserted claims.  (The parties stipulated to noninfringement of the remaining claims based on the court’s claim construction).  Interval appealed.

Indefiniteness.  Under Nautilus, “[a] claim fails to satisfy [the Section 112, 2] requirement and is thus invalid for indefiniteness if its language, when read in light of the specification and the prosecution history, ‘fail[s] to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.'”  Slip Op. at 10, quoting Nautilus.  However, there is more to the inquiry than just this general statement.  Here, the term at issue was a term of degree.  That, by itself, was not fatal:

We do not understand the Supreme Court to have implied in Nautilus, and we do not hold today, that terms of degree are inherently indefinite.  Claim language employing terms of degree has long been found definite where it provided enough certainty to one of skill in the art when read in the context of the invention….As the Supreme Court recognized in Nautilus, “absolute precision” in claim language is ‘unattainable.'”

Slip Op. at 11 (internal citations omitted).  But meaningful boundaries – which Judge Chen indicates must be objective – are necessary; that one might identify some standard for measuring claim scope does not mean the claims meet the § 112 requirement:

Although absolute or mathematical precision is not required, it is not enough, as some of the language in our prior cases may have suggested, to identify “some standard for measuring the scope of the phrase….The Supreme Court explained that a patent does not satisfy the definiteness requirement of § 112 merely because “a court can ascribe some meaning to a patent’s claims.”  Nautilus, 134 S. Ct. at 2130. The claims, when read in light of the specification and the prosecution history, must provide objective boundaries for those of skill in the art.

Id. at 12 (internal citations omitted).  Here, no such no such “objective boundaries” for those of skill in the art are provided in the patent:

The patents’ “unobtrusive manner” phrase is highly subjective and, on its face, provides little guidance to one of skill in the art….Although the patented invention is a system that displays content, the claim language offers no objective indication of the manner in which content images are to be displayed to the user. As the district court observed, “whether something distracts a user from his primary interaction depends on the preferences of the particular user and the circumstances under which any single user interacts with the display.”

The lack of objective boundaries in the claim language is particularly troubling in light of the patents’ command to read “the term ‘image’ . . . broadly to mean any sensory stimulus that is produced from the set of content data,” including sounds and video. ’652 patent, 6:60–64. The patents contemplate a variety of stimuli that could impact different users in different ways.  As we have explained, a term of degree fails to provide sufficient notice of its scope if it depends “on the unpredictable vagaries of any one person’s opinion.”

Id. at 13.  Nor did the written description provide the necessary guidance.  “Where, as here, we are faced with a “purely subjective” claim phrase, we must look to the written description for guidance.”  Id. But Interval’s principal argument, that “unobtrusive manner” is defined through its relationship to the “wallpaper” embodiment, thus informing those of skill in the art that “unobtrusive” has only a spatial meaning in the context of the patents, failed because the link was not clear: other portions of the specification suggest that the phrase may also be tied to the “screen saver” embodiment.  The specification is “at best muddled, leaving one unsure of whether the “unobtrusive manner” phrase has temporal dimensions as well as spatial dimensions.”  And it’s secondary argument, that the court must adopt a “narrow example” from the specification, failed because the “narrow example” from the specification was just that: an example, not a definition.  The patent drafter used the term “e.g.” (“exempli gratia”), which in English usage means “for example.”  If the drafter had instead used words of definition, such as “i.e.” (“id est” which in English usage means “that is”), it might have helped provide the necessary clarity.  Nor was one example sufficient here: “With this lone example, a skilled artisan is still left to wonder what other forms of display are unobtrusive and non-distracting. What if a displayed image takes up 20% of the screen space occupied by the primary application with which the user is interacting? Is the image unobtrusive? The specification offers no indication, thus leaving the skilled artisan to consult the “unpredictable vagaries of any one person’s opinion.”  Slip Op. at 18 (quoting Datamize).

Claim Construction/Noninfringement.  The Federal Circuit revised the claim construction of two terms in the four claims of the ‘652 patent that did not contain the “unobtrusive manner” language, vacated the district court’s judgment of noninfringement as to these claims, and remanded for further proceedings.

Nonobviousness: Not at issue here.  Are these patents obvious?  That’s a different question.  After the suit commenced, two of the defendants initiated an ex parte reexamination against the ‘652 patent and a third initiated an inter partes reexamination against the ‘314 patent.  While the examiners found the asserted claims of the patents to be patentable over the cited prior art,the PTAB reversed the decision on the ‘314 patent during the appeal in this case and held that all the claims of that patent were obvious, anticipated, or both.  The Federal Circuit opinion notes that Interval indicated that it will appeal that decision.

Judge Bryson: Computerized Loyalty-Point Conversion System Not Patent Eligible

Patent,

Loyalty Conversion Systems v. American Airlines (E.D. Texas 2014) LoyaltyConversion101Decision

Data processing and business method patents continue to fall like dominoes. In this case, Federal Circuit Judge Bryson – sitting by designation in the Eastern District of Texas – has determined on the pleadings that Loyalty’s reward-program patent is ineligible based upon the recent Supreme Court cases of Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014) and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2012).

Loyalty’s two patents are recently issued but claim priority back to a 2006 filing. U.S. Patent Nos. 8,313,023 (“the ′023 patent”) and 8,511,550 (“the ′550 patent”).  The inventors appear to be corporate lawyer Sean McGhie and patent attorney Brian Buchheit. The litigation is apparently being controlled by ITUS Corp (Robert Berman) although no assignments are listed for the patents in the US Patent Office website.

The basic goal behind the invention is to open-up the buying power of customer reward points. This goal is accomplished by allowing customers to transfer reward-points (and their typical limited buying power) for a more negotiable instrument.  The claims include a number of computers sending, displaying and storing messages back and forth in order to accomplish the aforementioned goal.  However, the patent proposes no advance in computer technology per se, other than perhaps being the first to propose the sending and storing of messages in the particular sequence identified.

Judge Bryson writes:

Notwithstanding the prolixity of the claims, they recite a very simple invention: a computer-driven method and computer program for converting one vendor’s loyalty award credits into loyalty award credits of another vendor. In principle, the invention is thus the equivalent of a currency exchange as applied to loyalty award credits such as airline frequent flyer miles or hotel loyalty award points. The Court concludes that the invention claimed in the ′023 and ′550 patents is not fundamentally different from the kinds of commonplace financial transactions that were the subjects of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010), and Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014), in which the Court held patent claims invalid for failing to recite patentable subject matter. This case falls squarely within the principles announced in those cases. Accordingly, the Court holds that the asserted claims of the ′023 and ′550 patents are invalid. . . .

In light of Bilski and CLS Bank, the resolution of the section 101 issue in this case is straightforward. At their core, the asserted claims of the two patents in suit are directed to the conversion of loyalty award points of one vendor into loyalty award points of another. That core idea plainly would not be patentable without more, as it is indistinguishable in principle from the simple and familiar financial or business operations that were at issue in Bilski and CLS Bank, as well as similar financial operations at issue in various Federal Circuit decisions in which the claims were held to be invalid under section 101. See Accenture Global Servs., GmbH v. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (“system for generating tasks to be performed in an insurance organization”); Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assurance Co., 687 F.3d 1266 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (method for managing a life insurance policy, including generating the policy, calculating fees, and determining the surrender value and investment value of the policy); Dealertrack, Inc. v. Huber, 674 F.3d 1315 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (method for processing credit applications); Fort Props., Inc. v. Am. Master Lease LLC, 671 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (method for creating a real estate investment instrument adapted for performing tax-deferred exchanges); CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (method for verifying the validity of credit card transactions). If anything, the conversion process at the core of the claims in this case is simpler and more commonplace than some of the methods held unpatentable in the cases cited above.

Regarding the computer technology elements of the claim, Judge Bryson dismissed those as “largely functional in nature” and that the resulting claims “do little more than set forth the general concept of currency exchange, as applied to loyalty awards, and then announce the use of ‘one or more’ computers to obtain various efficiencies in the process of converting one type of loyalty award credits into another.”  In the decision, Judge Bryson stepped through each of the technological limitations of the asserted claims and concluded that none offered the ‘something more’ required by the Supreme Court.

= = = =

Procedurally, this case is important as a dismissal-on-the-pleadings — i.e., quite early in the case.  For defendants – this means a major cost savings.

The standard for this type of dismissal are defined by Rule 12(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and  is “designed to dispose of cases where the material facts are not in dispute and a judgment on the merits can be rendered by looking to the substance of the pleadings and any judicially noticed facts.” Great Plains Trust Co v. Morgan Stanley, 313 F.3d 305 (5th Cir. 2002). The approach is akin to summary judgment and considers: “whether, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the complaint states a valid claim for relief.”

The dismissal on the pleadings is somewhat workable here because subject matter eligibility is a question of law that is largely based upon an introspective look at the patent document.  Of course some outside reference points are: is it an inventive concept? Further, a case potentially turn on claim construction.  In his opinion, Judge Bryson recognized these complications but noted that the parties “have not pointed to any factual issues that could affect” the eligibility analysis.  Further, Judge Bryson waited to make his decision until after a claim construction hearing to likewise ensure that claim construction would not affect the outcome of the 101 analysis.

= = = =

Claim 1 of the 550 patent is as follows:

  1. A method comprising:

a computer serving a set of one or more Web pages for a loyalty program of an entity to one or more remotely located client machines, wherein the Web pages are able to be rendered within a client-side browser as a graphical user interface on the one or more client machines, wherein upon being rendered within the client-side browser said graphical user interface shows a quantity of nonnegotiable credits, wherein said non-negotiable credits are loyalty points of the loyalty program possessed by a member, wherein upon being rendered within the client-side browser the graphical user interface comprises a conversion option to convert at least a subset of the shown non-negotiable credits into a quantity [of] entity independent funds, wherein said entity independent funds are different loyalty points of a different loyalty program of a commerce partner, wherein said entity independent funds are possessed by the member, wherein an agreement exists between the entity and the commerce partner, wherein the agreement permits members to convert the non-negotiable credits to the entity independent funds in accordance with a fixed credits-to-funds conversion ratio, wherein the agreement specifies that the entity is to compensate the commerce partner in an agreed upon amount of cash or credit for conversions of non-negotiable credits to entity independent funds, wherein said agreed upon amount is a multiple of a quantity of converted non-negotiable credits, wherein the entity independent funds are redeemable per the different loyalty program for commerce partner goods or for commerce partner services, wherein the commerce partner is not said entity, wherein in [the] absence of being converted the non-negotiable credits are not accepted as payment for commerce partner goods or for commerce partner services;

the computer responsive to receiving a message indicating a selection of the conversion option, processing the selection to effectuate changes in the served set of Web pages; and

responsive to the processing, the computer serving one or more Web pages or Web page updates that include the effectuated changes to the one or more remotely located client machines, wherein upon being rendered within the client-side browser the graphical user interface is updated with the effectuated changes, wherein the updated graphical user interface shows a reduced quantity of non-negotiable credits possessed by the member in the loyalty program, said reduced quantity resulting at least in part from the subset of non-negotiable credits being converted into the quantity of entity independent funds in accordance with the fixed credits-to-funds conversion ratio.

Failure to Disclose Adverse Litigation Claim Constructions During Ex Parte Reexam States Inequitable Conduct Claim

Ethics, ,

Masimo Corp. v. Philips Elect. North Am. Corp. (D. Del. Sept. 2, 2014) addressed whether the accused infringer would be permitted to amend its answer to include a claim for inequitable conduct.  The district court rejected Masimo’s contention that the answer failed to state a claim and allowed amendment.

The substantive allegations of the claim were that during ex parte reexam the patentee knew of but failed to disclose a district court’s claim interpretation that contradicted its position in reexam.  Specifically, the District Court had construed the claims to not require that claimed calculators actually determined a particular ratio, but in the PTO it argued the opposite — that the claimed calculators do require calculating the two ratios.

The district court acknowledged that the broadest reasonable construction standard applied in the office, but not in court, but nonetheless found the allegations sufficient under Exergen and Rule 9(b) and allowed amendment and also discovery into the issues.

Giving Effect to the Order of Steps in a Method Claim

Patent

Mformation Tech v. Research-in-Motion (Fed. Cir. 2014)

Although several important patent litigation procedure issues are embedded here, the most important legal outcome of this case is the Court’s construction of the method claim to require a particular stepwise order – even though the order is not express in the claim itself.

Mformation’s Patent No. 6,970,917 claims a client-server method for managing a wireless device’s mailbox. The steps include:

transmitting registration information relating to the wireless device from the wireless device to the server;

verifying the registration information at the server; and

without a request from the wireless device, performing the steps of:

establishing a mailbox for the wireless device at the server,

placing a command for the wireless device in the mailbox at the server,

delivering the command from the mailbox at the server to the wireless device by establishing a connection between the wireless device and the server, transmitting the contents of the mailbox from the server to the wireless device, and accepting the contents of the mailbox at the wireless device, and

executing the command at the wireless device;

wherein the connection is established based on a threshold condition.

After for years of litigation, the jury found that BlackBerry infringes ($200 million verdict), but the federal district court rejected the people’s verdict on motion for JMOL.

The basic question at issue is claim construction – and whether the step of “establishing a connection between the wireless device and the server” must occur prior to the step of “transmitting the contents of the mailbox from the server to the wireless device.”  Apparently, in the blackberry device, a connection to the mobile device is established contemporaneously with the transmission of contents.

In finding a required order of operations, the Federal Circuit writes:

We agree … that claim 1 requires that a connection be established before transmission. We are persuaded … that the separate sub-step for establishing a connection would become “superfluous” if we concluded that a connection did not have to be established (completed) before transmission. That is because, under such construction of the claim, establishing a connection is necessarily encompassed in transmitting a command.

Further, we note that other sub-steps in claim 1 inherently require an order-of-steps. . . . And while it is true that “we have expressly rejected the contention that if a patent describes only a single embodiment, the claims of the patent must be construed as being limited to that embodiment,” Phillips v. AWH, we do note that our conclusion is consistent with the sole embodiment in the specification.

Thus, the basic idea here is not that the listing of steps in a particular order necessarily means that the claims require that particular order.  What is implicit here, however, is that the listing order is important and will be given limiting effect when additional factors corroborate that result.

= = = = =

An odd element of the case is that the district court’s JMOL determination (rejecting the jury verdict) was based upon its post-verdict “clarification” of the claim construction. There is some prior precedent barring district courts from altering claim construction post-verdict. Thus, here it was important that the Federal Circuit found that the claim meaning had only been “clarified” rather than substantively modified.

During the trial, the patentee’s infringement testimony and evidence relied upon the original claim construction that did not expressly require the stepwise ordering. Thus, it is not surprising that evidence presented fails to prove infringement under the new construction.  What is surprising, however, is that the Federal Circuit did not order a new trial based upon the modification.

Judge Mayer Raises 101 When Not In Issue: Other Panelists Don’t

Invalidity, Obviousness, Patent, Patentable Subject Matter, Software, , , ,

I am sure Dennis will do his usual full and grand treatment, but this one is sort of the counter-punch to Ultramercial. In I/P Engine, Inc. v. AOL Inc. (Fed. Cir. Aug. 15, 2014) (per curiam), the court split on whether the claims were properly found by the jury to have been not obvious, with Judge Chen dissenting on that point and the per curiam opinion reversing the finding of no invalidity. (The other panel members were Judge Wallach and Judge Mayer).

Recall that in Ultramercial the court emphasized that 101 was seemingly a defense, and so evidence was needed and the usual presumption of validity applied, and so on.  Here, Judge Mayer seemed to take precisely the opposite tact, though it’s not quite clear.  In addition to writing at length about what he perceives the “technological arts” test to mean and require, he wrote:

The Supreme Court has dictated that the subject mat- ter eligibility analysis must precede the obviousness inquiry. Flook, 437 U.S. at 593 (“The obligation to determine what type of discovery is sought to be patented” so as to determine whether it falls within the ambit of sec- tion 101 “must precede the determination of whether that discovery is, in fact, new or obvious.”); Bilski, 130 S. Ct. at 3225 (explaining that the issue of whether claims are directed to statutory subject matter is “a threshold test”); see also In re Comiskey, 554 F.3d 967, 973 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (“Only if the requirements of § 101 are satisfied is the inventor allowed to pass through to the other requirements for patentability, such as novelty under § 102 and . . . non-obviousness under § 103.” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). To fail to address at the very outset whether claims meet the strictures of section 101 is to put the cart before the horse. Until it is determined that claimed subject matter is even eligible for patent protection, a court has no warrant to consider subordinate validity issues such as non-obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 or adequate written description under 35 U.S.C. § 112.

From a practical perspective, there are clear advantages to addressing section 101’s requirements at the outset of litigation. Patent eligibility issues can often be resolved without lengthy claim construction, and an early determination that the subject matter of asserted claims is patent ineligible can spare both litigants and courts years of needless litigation. To the extent that certain classes of claims—such as claims on methods of doing business—are deemed presumptively patent ineligible, moreover, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will have more resources to devote to expeditiously processing applications which disclose truly important advances in science and technology.

Even more fundamentally, the power to issue patents is not unbounded. To the contrary, the constitutional grant of authority “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8, “is both a grant of power and a limitation,” Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 5 (1966); see Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U.S. 141, 146 (1989). Section 101’s vital role—a role that sections 103 and 112 “are not equipped” to take on, Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1304— is to insure that patent protection promotes, rather than impedes, scientific progress and technological innovation. A robust application of section 101 ensures that the nation’s patent laws remain tethered to their constitutional moorings.

I am guessing we’ll see another en banc case soon…

Pendency from Filing to First Action

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One common complaint of the U.S. patent system is delay. Most patents take over three years to issue. Adding in priority claims moves-out the average timeline (original priority filing date to issuance) to over five years. [Link]. One way that the PTO is addressing that concern is to focus on reducing the backlog of unexamined applications – those that have been filed but that have not yet received a first action on the merits (FAOM). Under Director David Kappos, the goal was to reduce the FAOM timeline to < 10 months – that goal appeared quite amazing at the time, but is now somewhat into focus.

In its Official Gazette, the USPTO occasionally reports average filing-date for recently issued FAOMs. I used those reports to create the above chart considers the timeline for receiving first-actions across the various technology centers within the USPTO. Two salient points appear from the chart. First, the average pendency of unexamined applications has dropped significantly since 2011 and all technology centers are under two-years pendency. Second, the variance between the technology centers has been significantly reduced. This second result has come about based upon efforts at the PTO to move examining resources to areas that are suffering the most from the backlog. Although still the shortest pendency, design patents (TC2900) have come roughly in-line with the rest of the technology areas.

As an interim marker, the time-to-first-action is fairly meaningless. However, the PTO hopes that its reduction will result in an overall reduction in pendency. Time will tell whether that hope is realized. For patentees, the timing can be eliminated by requesting accelerated examination ($4,000 fee).

As suggested by the above discussion, the USPTO patent examination corps is divided into a number of technology centers, and each technology center is sub-divided into one or more art units. The technology focus of each tech center is listed below.

  • 1600 – Biotechnology and Organic Chemistry
  • 1700 – Chemical and Materials Engineering
  • 2100 – Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security
  • 2400 – Computer Networks, Multiplex communication, Video Distribution, and Security
  • 2600 – Communications
  • 2800 – Semiconductors, Electrical and Optical Systems and Components
  • 2900 – Designs
  • 3600 – Transportation, Construction, Electronic Commerce, Agriculture, National Security and License & Review
  • 3700 – Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing, Products

Supreme Court Patent Cases Per Decade

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The Chart below is an update of one I published earlier this year. The new chart adds in a couple of extra cases that I had previously not included and also takes account of the Supreme Court’s spate of decisions this term, including Alice v. CLS Bank (subject matter eligibility); Nautilus v. Biosig (indefiniteness); Limelight v. Akamai (divided infringement for inducement); Highmark v. Allcare (attorney fee awards in exceptional cases); Octane Fitness v. Icon Health & Fitness (attorney fee awards in exceptional cases); and Medtronic v. Boston Scientific (burden of proving infringement always falls on patentee even in licensee DJ actions). Readers should also note that the decade of 2010’s is not yet ½ completed and the Court has already granted writ of certiorari in one pending action: Teva v. Sandoz (standard of appellate review for factual findings that serve as the underpinnings for claim construction). We can expect that the trend will continue over the next several years with special focus on the new rules and procedures stemming from the America Invents Act of 2011. Note – my list largely agrees with Prof Ouellette’s

Interpreting Claims Against The Drafter

Patent

By Dennis Crouch

Over the past year, the Federal Circuit has decided dozens of important patent cases. Of those, one of the most important appears to be 3M Innovative Props. Co. v. Tredegar Corp., 725 F.3d 1315 (Fed. Cir. 2013). When I wrote about the decision in August 2013, I titled my post “Judge Plager: Construe Ambiguous Terms Against the Drafter.” In the decision, Judge Plager’s concurring opinion was the most pointed and poignant. However, each of the judges wrote their own opinions, with Judge Reyna writing for the majority and Judge O’Malley both concurring-in-part and dissenting-in-part.

Judge Plager’s concurring opinion focuses on the intentional ambiguity inserted into the claims by 3M. Judge Plager argues that courts should begin to apply the contract doctrine of contra proferentem and construe ambiguous terms against the drafter (i.e., against the patent holder). Judge Plager writes:

Sometimes such ambiguity [in claim drafting] is the result of sloppy drafting, and sometimes it appears that claims are drafted with a degree of indefiniteness so as to leave room to later argue for a broad interpretation designed to capture later-developed competition. . . .

Cases like this—claim construction issues such as this one—may well deserve application of a principle analogous to the contract doctrine of contra proferentem. See Williston on Contracts § 32:12 (4th ed.). When a term is ambiguous, a crystal ball matter, the ambiguity should be construed against the draftsman. (Or better yet, the claim should simply be invalidated as indefinite, though our court has not seen fit to go there as yet.)

Following this case, the Supreme Court decided Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 134 S.Ct. 212 (2014) in a way that very much agrees with Judge Plager’s suggestions – but goes further by substantially lowering the standard for invalidating ambiguous claim terms by applying the doctrine of indefiniteness. The Supreme Court also highlighted the intentional-ambiguity problem – noting that “absent a meaningful definiteness check, we are told, patent applicants face powerful incentives to inject ambiguity into their claims.” In Nautilus, the Supreme Court was not asked to decide the Supreme Court did not directly indicate that ambiguity should be construed against the drafter. However, the court’s discussion suggest this possibility.

I wonder how patentees would alter their claim drafting if Judge Plager’s rule became law?

Data Structure Patent Ineligible

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By Dennis Crouch

Digitech Image v. Electronics for Imaging (Fed. Cir. 2014)

Digitech sued dozens of companies for infringing its U.S. Patent No. 6,128,415. As I wrote back in April 2014, basic idea behind the invention is to tag digital images with particular information about the camera and its color/spatial image qualities in a form that is device-independent. The patent includes claims directed to both a “device profile” and a “method of generating a device profile.” The profile is simply a set of data elements regarding the camera qualities discussed above and the method simply involves generating and combining those data elements. This sort of tagging of digital images has become ubiquitous and so the patent could be quite valuable – except that the Federal Circuit has held the patent invalid as lacking subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. §101.

Claim 1 is drafted as follows:

1. A device profile for describing properties of a device in a digital image reproduction system to capture, transform or render an image, said device profile comprising:

first data for describing a device dependent transformation of color information content of the image to a device independent color space; and

second data for describing a device dependent transformation of spatial information content of the image in said device independent color space.

The District Court found the claims invalid and that decision has been affirmed by the Federal Circuit. Decision by Judge Reyna, joined by Judges Moore and Hughes. Because subject matter eligibility is a question of law, the Federal Circuit reviews that issue de novo without giving deference to the district court analysis.

Most subject matter eligibility cases rely upon the non-statutory limitations on eligibility (abstract idea, law of nature, natural phenomenon). However, the court here begins with the statute:

Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

35 U.S.C. §101. The statute identifies four categories of patent eligible inventions: processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter. In considering the “device profile” claim, the appellate panel concluded that the claim did not properly fit within any category and is therefore not eligible for patenting. The court writes:

Data in its ethereal, non-physical form is simply information that does not fall under any of the categories of eligible subject matter under section 101.

At the Federal Circuit, the patentee argued that one of skill in the art would understand that the claims required hardware or software within a digital image processing system. However, in an implicit claim construction, the appellate panel rejected that argument – finding that the claims are not so limited. “The claims encompass all embodiments of the information contained in the device profile, regardless of the process through which this information is obtained or the physical medium in which it is stored.” The underlying problem with this analysis is the reality that data is always stored in a physical form lest it disappear.

This first portion of the opinion has the important resulting holding that patent eligible subject matter must be in “a physical or tangible form.” Quoting Burr v. Duryee (1863) (“a concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices”). The court declined to discuss how it would hold if the claimed data structure had been linked to a physical item such as some sort of computer hardware. Of course, this physicality test as an absolute rule was seemingly rejected by the Supreme Court in Bilski.

In the second part of the short opinion, the Federal Circuit addressed the method claims. Those claims clearly passed the statutory category test as being drawn to processes. For the method claims then, the court turned to the abstract idea limitation recently discussed by the Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. ___ (2014).

Alice Corp. offers a two-step process for determining patent eligibility of a claimed invention:

  • Building Block: First, determine whether the claim recites or is directed to a patent-ineligible concept such as an abstract idea, law of nature, or product of nature.
  • Something More: Second, determine whether the claim recites sufficient additional inventive features such that the claim does not solely capture the abstract idea.

As the Court wrote in Alice:

At some level, “all inventions . . . embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.” Mayo. Thus, an invention is not rendered ineligible for patent simply because it involves an abstract concept. See Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U. S. 175, 187 (1981). “[A]pplication[s]” of such concepts “‘to a new and useful end,'” we have said, remain eligible for patent protection. Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63, 67 (1972).

Accordingly, in applying the §101 exception, we must distinguish between patents that claim the “‘buildin[g] block[s]'” of human ingenuity and those that integrate the building blocks into something more, Mayo, 566 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20), thereby “transform[ing]” them into a patent-eligible invention, id., at ___ (slip op., at 3). The former “would risk disproportionately tying up the use of the underlying” ideas, id., at ___ (slip op., at 4), and are therefore ineligible for patent protection. The latter pose no comparable risk of pre-emption, and therefore remain eligible for the monopoly granted under our patent laws.

Although the Supreme Court provided this two-step framework, it left some gaps for lower courts to discern, such as the meaning of “abstract idea” and “something more.”

The process claim at issue here is directed to a method of generating a device profile and includes three steps:

[Transform First Data] generating first data for describing a device dependent transformation of color information content of the image to a device independent color space through use of measured chromatic stimuli and device response characteristic functions;

[Transform Second Data] generating second data for describing a device dependent transformation of spatial information content of the image in said device independent color space through use of spatial stimuli and device response characteristic functions; and

[Combine Data] combining said first and second data into the device profile.

In reading these steps, the Federal Circuit identified what it sees as the abstract idea:

The two data sets are generated by taking existing information—i.e., measured chromatic stimuli, spatial stimuli, and device response characteristic functions—and organizing this information into a new form. The above claim thus recites an ineligible abstract process of gathering and combining data that does not require input from a physical device.

According to the court, the reason this result is abstract is that it is simply a “process that employs mathematical algorithms to manipulate existing information to generate additional information.” As the Supreme Court wrote in Flook,

If a claim is directed essentially to a method of calculating, using a mathematical formula, even if the solution is for a specific purpose, the claimed method is nonstatutory.

Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1978).

After identifying the abstract idea, the Court considered and rejected the notion that the patent provided “something more” that would be sufficient to transform the result into something patentable.

The Federal Circuit did not raise or discuss the presumption of validity afforded patents under 35 U.S.C. §282. In i4i, the Supreme Court ruled that invalidity for missing the §102(b) statutory-bar date must be proven with clear and convincing evidence. However, that defense is a question of fact. As discussed above, subject matter eligibility is a question of law and such questions are generally not controlled by the same evidentiary standards.

= = = = =

A major difficulty in abstract idea cases is defining the “abstract idea.” Here, the court’s description of the abstract idea at issue is somewhat confusing. Its clearest statement is that it is the “abstract process of gathering and combining data that does not require input from a physical device.” That statement has the qualities of (1) being well known and old; (2) being totally divorced from any physical device or technology; and (3) focused on information transformation rather than the transformation of anything in the physical realm. These clues here closely follow the machine-or-transformation test that the Federal Circuit implemented in its Bilski decision. Later, the Supreme Court rejected the reasoning that the MoT test was the absolute test, but agreed that it served as an important clue of subject matter eligibility.

Applicant’s IDS Submission of Litigation Documents Constituted Disclaimer

Patent,

By Dennis Crouch

Golden Bridge Tech v. Apple (Fed. Cir. 2014)

This case should be seen as a follow-on to Judge Moore’s recent decision in X2Y Attenuators v. US International Trade Commission (Fed. Cir. 2014). In both cases, Judge Moore applies the doctrine of prosecution disclaimer to limit claim scope.

Here, Golden Bridge asserted two patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 6,574,267 and 7,359,427, the first of which had been previously asserted in a different case. In the prior case, Golden Bridge stipulated to a particular definition of the claim term “preamble.” (Note – the word “preamble” is in the claim and its definition is in dispute). Golden Bridge then submitted the stipulated construction to the USPTO for the still-pending application as well as the prior patent that was also under reexamination. Although submitted in an IDS, the stipulated dismissal was never directly or otherwise referred to in the prosecution history.

In the new lawsuit against Apple, Golden Bridge argued that the prior stipulation was not binding and the IDS filing certainly should not be seen as a prosecution disclaimer. Both the district court and now the Federal Circuit have rejected Golden Bridge’s position:

We conclude that GBT’s submissions during prosecution of its stipulated construction for the term “preamble” constitute disclaimer. . . . Here, GBT clearly and unmistakably limited the term.

Rather than merely filing the IDS form, the applicant included a cover-sheet letter asking the USPTO to consider the references stating:

It is respectfully requested that the documents be expressly considered during prosecution of this application.

In the only off-kilter portion of the opinion, Judge Moore identified that statement as important for the disclaimer – finding that “[i]t would have been natural for both the PTO and the public to rely upon the stipulation in determining the scope of the claimed invention.” (In my view, any IDS Submission already includes at least an implicit request that the documents be expressly considered.)

Judge Moore takes care to limit the ruling here by expressly indicating that the ordinary submission of third-party prior art should not ordinarily create any disclaimer. The difference here is that the IDS submission included an admission by the patentee to a court of law that related directly to claim term scope. Judge Moore also indicated that the patentee could have overcome the disclaimer with an express statement in the prosecution history denying the applicability of the prior in-court statement.

I wonder if the case would have been decided differently by Judge Moore if the IDS submission had included a boiler-plate statement that “No aspect of these submissions constitute a disclaimer of claim scope.” Judge Moore is a particular stickler regarding admissions and statements by parties, even when made in boiler plate language. Thus, I suspect that such a disclaimer-of-disclaimers would have been effective here. On the flip side, I also wonder whether the submission of the stipulated claim construction as a public document in Federal Court (even without the IDS submission) should itself be seen as a prosecution disclaimer in itself. Anyone truly concerned with the patents in question would have reviewed the court filings and likely seen them as more important than the prosecution history files of continuation or foreign applications, for instance.

Studying the Mongrel: Why Teva v. Sandoz Won’t Solve Claim Construction

Patent, , ,

Guest post by Heather F. Auyang, Senior Counsel at LTL Trial Attorneys in San Francisco, California. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of LTL Trial Attorneys.

This is the Teva-update to last summer’s Patently-O Guest Post titled “Why Lighting Ballast Won’t Solve Claim Construction” (https://patentlyo.com/patent/2013/07/guest-post-why-lighting-ballast-wont-solve-claim-construction.html), which discussed two then-recently published empirical studies – a study of “close cases” (analyzing all post-Markman claim construction cases where the Federal Circuit panel was split) and a study of “reversals” (analyzing all post-Phillips claim construction cases in which the Federal Circuit reversed the district court).   Updates to both studies have now been published in a sequel article, which provides further explanation and answers to some of the questions that were raised in this very forum last year.  The past year’s data is unsurprising – it is exactly what the models provided by the original studies predicted, and it confirms, yet again, that changing the standard of review will not have a particularly beneficial effect on claim construction predictability or consistency. This conclusion is based on two key facts shown by the data:  (1) that Federal Circuit judges remain divided on how to approach the task of claim construction, and (2) that when district courts are reversed, it’s almost always because they have misapplied settled claim construction principles.  In fact, giving more deference to district courts will likely exacerbate, rather than fix, problems with claim construction.

The close cases study (of 105 cases) continues to show that each Federal Circuit judge who has participated in more than five close cases falls into a distinct camp.  Judges Wallach, Linn, Clevenger, and Moore “go broad” in over 66% of close cases (Judge Rader was also in this group); Judges Bryson, Prost, Mayer, Schall, and Dyk “go broad” in between 47% and 55% of close cases; and Judges Newman and Lourie “go broad” in under 31 percent of close cases.

As pointed out last year, if the goal is to make claim construction more predictable, a good place to start would be to ensure that all the Federal Circuit judges are following the same rules of claim construction.  This data clearly shows that they are not.  While any given judge in any given opinion can cite the same agreed-upon rules, the rules are not preventing significant differences in approach among the judges.  Last year’s post and article posited that some judges are expressly or implicitly following an “actually invented” standard that other judges reject.  Whatever the explanation, until these differences are ironed out, tinkering with other issues – like deference to district courts – is unlikely to be productive.

The reversals data (based on 153 cases) is even more relevant to the question of deference than is the close cases data, since it deals directly with the relationship between the Federal Circuit and the district courts.  Focusing on reversals makes sense because this dataset, presumably, includes the cases whose results would change if the Supreme Court determines that district courts should get more deference in claim construction.  Accordingly, these are the decisions that should be studied before one concludes that the current standard of de novo review should be changed.  As it turns out, the reversals data suggests that the high reversal rate is caused by district court error, not Federal Circuit arbitrariness. If that’s the case, why in the world are people advocating more deference to district courts?

The reversals study coded for whether the Federal Circuit decision was in a broadening or a narrowing direction.  The result for the 11-month period since the last study was a broadening rate of 87.5%, even higher than the previously-reported overall broadening rate of 72.5%.  In other words, in cases where district courts are “getting it wrong,” according to the Federal Circuit, they are systematically interpreting the claims too narrowly.  As pointed out last year, these narrowing interpretations typically enable district courts to grant summary judgment of non-infringement (or encourage the parties to enter such a stipulation), and thereby permit the Federal Circuit to review the claim construction issue without going through the trouble and expense of a trial.  In the year since then, we have not heard any other plausible explanation.  Last year’s post and article also challenged any advocate of deference to provide one or more examples from the “reversals” cases that (1) would have come out differently under a deference regime, and (2) should have come out differently.  We haven’t heard anything on that either.

This year’s article – including fancy color charts analyzing Federal Circuit judge proclivities across broad/narrow, less spec/more spec, pro-patent/anti-patent, and pro-affirm/pro- reverse; and pie-charts and tables for the reversals data –  is What Reversals and Close Cases Reveal About Claim Construction at the Federal Circuit – The Sequel, 13 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 525 (2014) (available at http://repository.jmls.edu/ripl/vol13/iss3/3/). The comments here on last year’s article were of a very high caliber; hoping for the same again this time!