Justia U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Google previously petitioned for inter partes review (IPR) of Hammond’s 483 patent, which is related to and shares the same specification as the 816 patent, disclosing a communication system that allows a communication device to execute one or more applications remotely. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board determined that all challenged claims of the 483 patent would have been obvious based on prior art combinations that included Gilmore and Dodrill. Hammond did not appeal and the decision became final.Google petitioned for IPR of all claims of the 816 patent but did not assert the same grounds against all claims. The Board held claims 1–13 and 20–30 would have been obvious over combinations of prior art, including Gilmore and Dodrill; Google failed to show claim 14 would have been obvious in view of prior art (Gilmore and Creamer) and also failed to show dependent claims 15–19 were unpatentable.The Federal Circuit reversed in part. The Board’s determination that claim 18 of the 483 patent is unpatentable renders claim 18 of the 816 patent unpatentable based on collateral estoppel. Claim 14 of the 816 patent rises and falls with claim 18 and is, therefore, unpatentable. The court rejected Google’s argument that dependent claims 15–17 and 19 would have been obvious based on the Board’s findings as to parallel dependent claims. View "Google, LLC v. Hammond Development International, Inc." on Justia Law

Treehouse sued Valve for infringement of its patent, which discloses a method of collecting data from an information network in response to user choices of a plurality of users navigating character-enabled network sites on the network. Valve owns two accused video games that involve team-based competitions. The parties adopted the interpretation of the “CE limitation” that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board reached in a previous inter partes review: “A network location, other than a user device, operating under control of a site program to present a character, object, or scene to a user interface.” Treehouse’s infringement expert, Friedman, submitted a report that applied the plain and ordinary meaning for the CE limitation rather than the agreed-upon construction,The district court ruled in favor of Valve, striking every paragraph of Friedman’s report that Valve requested and finding noninfringement because Treehouse failed to offer admissible evidence showing that Valve’s video games operated the CE limitation. The Federal Circuit affirmed. The district court did not abuse its discretion in striking expert testimony that did not rely upon the parties’ own agreed-upon construction, that the court adopted, nor err in finding that Treehouse failed to rebut Valve’s evidence of noninfringement. View "Treehouse Avatar LLC v. Valve Corp." on Justia Law

CUPP’s patents share a common name and priority date and address the problem of malicious attacks aimed at mobile devices. They generally concern systems and methods for waking a mobile device from a power-saving mode and then performing security operations on the device, “such as scanning a storage medium for malware, or updating security applications.” In inter partes review (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board concluded that the challenged claims in CUPP’s patents were unpatentable as obvious over two prior art references.The Federal Circuit affirmed, upholding a claim construction determination involving the limitation concerning a “security system processor,” which appears in every independent claim in the patents. Substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that either prior art renders obvious a claimed “security agent” on a mobile device, which “perform[s] security services.” View "CUPP Computing AS v. Trend Micro Inc." on Justia Law

VLSI sued Intel for infringing a patent, directed to “[a] technique for alleviating the problems of defects caused by stress applied to bond pads” of an integrated circuit. The district court construed the term “force region,” which appears in two independent claims, to mean a “region within the integrated circuit in which forces are exerted on the interconnect structure when a die attach is performed.” In the meantime, Intel sought inter partes review (IPR), and proposed the construction of “force region,” consistent with the construction that the district court adopted. The parties disagreed as to the meaning of the term “die attach.” In its Institution Decisions, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board stated that it disagreed with VLSI that the method of performing a “die attach” cannot include the method of wire bonding. In its Final Decision, the Board did not resolve the meaning of “die attach” but construed the term “force region” as “including at least the area directly under the bond pad.” The Board found that the patent specification made clear that the term “force region” was not limited to flip chip bonding, but could include wire bonding and concluded that the challenged claims were unpatentable for obviousness.The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s treatment of the “force region” limitation but held that the Board erred in construing the phrase “used for electrical interconnection” to encompass a metallic structure that is not connected to active circuitry. View "VLSI Technology LLC v. Intel Corp." on Justia Law

Sleep Number’s patents describe systems and methods that purport to adjust the pressure in an air mattress “in less time and with greater accuracy” than previously known.” In inter partes reviews (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found that some, but not all, of the challenged claims were not unpatentable.The Federal Circuit affirmed, upholding the Board’s decision permitting Sleep Number to present proposed amended claims that both responded to a ground of unpatentability and made other wording changes unrelated to the IPR proceedings. Each proposed substitute claim included at least one responsive narrowing limitation, so Sleep Number was free to include other amendments, including any addressing perceived 35 U.S.C. 101 and 112 issues. American National challenged the proposed claims and the Board was free to determine whether the proposed claims were unpatentable. The Board did not err in determining that the proposed amended claims were enabled, despite an admitted error in the specification; that error and its correction would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. The court rejected arguments that the proposed amended claims should have been rejected for allegedly raising an inventorship issue and that the Board inappropriately considered the petitioner’s sales data in its secondary considerations analysis. View "American National Manufacturing Inc. v. Sleep Number Corp." on Justia Law

SoClean, a medical-device company that produces sanitizing devices for CPAP machines, owns the 195 registration for the configuration of replacement filters for its sanitizing devices. SoClean sued its former distributor, Sunset, for patent infringement, and trademark infringement based on that registration. On a motion for a preliminary injunction, the district court concluded that SoClean was likely to succeed on the merits and was entitled to a presumption of irreparable harm. Balancing the equities and weighing the public interest, the court concluded that enjoining all sales of Sunset’s filters would “go[] much further than necessary” to “end any possible statutory violation.” The court crafted a narrow “injunction that prohibits Sunset from engaging in those practices that result in consumer confusion” and enjoined Sunset from marketing its filters “using images of the filter cartridge alone”; “[a]ny image, drawings, or other depictions of Sunset’s filter cartridge used for the purposes of promotion, marketing and/or sales shall prominently display the Sunset brand name in a manner that leaves no reasonable confusion that what is being sold is a Sunset brand filter.”The Federal Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the district court afforded too much weight to the presumption of validity and held Sunset to a higher standard of proof than the applicable preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. View "SoClean, Inc. v. Sunset Healthcare Solutions, Inc." on Justia Law

Aire sued Apple for patent infringement in the Western District of Texas in October 2021. In April 2022, Apple moved for transfer to the Northern District of California. Apple submitted a declaration from an Apple finance manager, “to establish certain facts, such as the relevance, role, and locations of witnesses and their teams, as well as the relevance and locations of various categories of documents.” Shortly before the close of venue discovery, Apple sought leave to supplement its motion with additional declarations, offering to make the declarants available for deposition and stating non-opposition to a “reasonable continuance” of the transfer proceedings.The district court granted Apple’s motion, but sua sponte ordered the parties to complete fact discovery on the merits (which it extended for an additional 30 weeks) and go through another six weeks of re-briefing of the motion before it would rule on Apple’s request to transfer. Apple then sought a writ of mandamus. Citing judicial economy, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s amended scheduling order and directed the court to postpone fact discovery and other substantive proceedings until after consideration of Apple’s motion for transfer. View "In Re: Apple Inc." on Justia Law

Uniloc sued Motorola for infringement of a patent that concerns pairing a telephone with another device and using the other device to make a telephone call using the telephone’s cellular capabilities. Motorola alleged that Uniloc lacked standing, having granted Fortress a license and an unfettered right to sublicense the asserted patent. The district court dismissed, agreeing that Uniloc had granted a license and that the existence of a license deprived it of standing. Related cases, in which Uniloc had alleged infringement, had been dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On appeal, Motorola asserted collateral estoppel.The Federal Circuit affirmed. The court acknowledged that patent owners arguably do not lack standing simply because they granted a license that gave another party the right to sublicense the patent to an alleged infringer but declined to address that issue. , Uniloc was collaterally estopped from arguing that it did not grant a license, including a right to sublicense, to Fortress, and that the existence of that license deprived Uniloc of standing. View "Uniloc USA, INC. v. Motorola Mobility, LLC" on Justia Law

Uniloc brought multiple infringement suits against Google concerning patents directed to innovations in multimedia content delivery, IT security, high-resolution imaging, network connectivity, video conferencing, and image and text searching. Google alleged Uniloc lacked standing because its predecessors had granted Fortress a license and an unfettered right to sublicense to the asserted patents as part of a financing arrangement. Uniloc argued that any license had been eliminated by a Termination Agreement executed between Uniloc’s predecessors and Fortress before the suits commenced.The district court dismissed, finding that a license had been granted and survived the Termination Agreement. The Federal Circuit reversed. The district court erred in interpreting the Termination Agreement. The License Agreement granted Fortress a “non-exclusive, transferrable, sub-licensable, divisible, irrevocable, fully paid-up, royalty-free and worldwide license” to several of Uniloc’s patents, including those at issue. The Termination Agreement stated that the License Agreement “shall terminate and shall be of no further force or effect without any further documentation or action and without liability to any party hereto, and the rights of each of the applicable parties under the applicable agreement shall terminate.” By terminating the License Agreement and rights under that agreement, the Termination Agreement terminated Fortress’s license. Although the License Agreement describes the license as “irrevocable” the context clearly refers to the license’s being “irrevocable” by the licensor and does not preclude revocation by mutual agreement. View "Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Google LLC" on Justia Law

Finjan sued ESET for infringement. The four asserted (expired) patents are part of a family of patents directed to systems and methods for detecting computer viruses in a “Downloadable” through a security profile. Finjan claims priority for each of the patents back to a 1996 provisional application. The district court held a Markman hearing and construed the term “Downloadable,” which appears in the claims of all asserted patents, to mean “a small executable or interpretable application program which is downloaded from a source computer and run on a destination computer.” The court reasoned that the patent family contained “somewhat differing definitions” that “can be reconciled” and, based on the definitions and examples included throughout those patents, the term Downloadable should be construed to include the word “small” as defined in the 520 Patent.The court then granted summary judgment, finding the asserted patents indefinite. The Federal Circuit reversed. The district court erred because it viewed the differing definitions throughout the patent family as competing and determined that the asserted patents should be limited to the most restricted definition; it is not necessary to limit the asserted patents because the definitions are not competing. The use of a restrictive term in an earlier application does not reinstate that term in a later patent that purposely deletes the term, even if the earlier patent is incorporated by reference. View "Finjan, Inc.. v. ESET, LLC" on Justia Law