Justia Patents Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed the district court's remand to state court. Plaintiff moved to dismiss the case. At issue was whether the district court has jurisdiction over an inventorship dispute where the contested patent has not yet been issued. The court concluded that, regardless of whether the removed complaint included an inventorship dispute, that dispute was inadequate to establish the district court's jurisdiction because the allegations indicated that no patent had issued; by raising a timely objection to removal, plaintiff properly preserved its jurisdictional argument; and because removal was improper and the case had not yet been tried on the merits, binding precedent dictated that the court remand the case to state court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's remand order as amended and dismissed plaintiff's motion and cross-motion. View "Camsoft Data Sys., Inc. v. Southern Electronics Supply, et al." on Justia Law

Augme sued Yahoo! alleging infringement of certain claims of two patents that disclose adding functionality, such as media or advertisements, to a web page. Yahoo! counterclaimed that Augme and World Talk Radio infringed certain claims of its patent. After claim construction, the court granted Yahoo! summary judgment of noninfringement and held that certain means-plus-function terms in claims 19 and 20 of Augme’s patent were indefinite. The parties stipulated to infringement of the asserted claims of Yahoo!’s patent based on the court’s claim construction. The Federal Circuit affirmed that Yahoo!’s accused systems do not infringe the Augme patents either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents and that certain claims are indefinite. The court also upheld the district court’s construction of the claim term “server hostname.”View "Augme Techs, Inc. v. Yahoo! Inc." on Justia Law

In 1987, Krauser, a periodontist, designed a dental implant system. He paid BHI’s predecessor to produce drawings and prototypes. In1991, the parties entered into a written agreement that specified that Krauser would develop new products for the company to produce and sell and that the drawings were “property of [BHI].” Krauser was entitled to royalties. Krauser obtained a patent covering one component of the system and listing Krauser as the inventor. The company subsequently secured patents covering dental implant systems, naming Shaw as the sole inventor. Krauser sued the company and Shaw for a declaration of ownership rights and for copyright and patent infringement. While the suits were pending, the company filed for bankruptcy, and Krauser filed claims in bankruptcy court. In a settlement agreement, Krauser granted the company a 10-year patent license and “all rights . . . [to] the dental implant system currently being manufactured.” The bankruptcy court approved the agreement. Later, several patents on dental implant systems issued to BHI. None listed Krauser as an inventor. Krauser alleged that BHI failed to pay the full amount of royalties or submit to required audits and claimed default. The district court granted BHI summary judgment, construing the settlement to apply only to implants being manufactured in 1996, not implants manufactured at the time of litigation, and finding that Krauser had no ownership rights. The Eleventh Circuit transferred the case “[b]ecause the Federal Circuit has exclusive appellate jurisdiction … relating to patents.” The Federal Circuit transferred the case back, noting that Krauser had dropped his claim of inventorship. View "Krauser v. Biohorizons, Inc." on Justia Law

Suffolk owns a patent directed to methods and systems for controlling a server that supplies files to computers rendering web pages. The patent discloses using the address of the referring web page to determine whether to serve a file, and if so, which file. The district court entered summary judgment of invalidity, holding that claims 1, 7, and 9 were anticipated by a Usenet newsgroup post. Suffolk then stipulated that, in light of the district court’s prior art, claim construction, and expert testimony rulings, claim 6 was also anticipated. The Federal Circuit affirmed. View "Suffolk Techs., LLC v. AOL Inc." on Justia Law

Sun developed the Java computer programming platform, released in 1996, to eliminate the need for different versions of computer programs for different operating systems or devices. With Java, a programmer could “write once, run anywhere.” The Java virtual machine (JVM) takes source code that has been converted to bytecode and converts it to binary machine code. Oracle wrote 37 packages of computer source code, “application programming interfaces” (API), in the Java language, and licenses them to others for writing “apps” for computers, tablets, smartphones, and other devices. Oracle alleged that Google’s Android mobile operating system infringed Oracle’s patents and copyrights. The jury found no patent infringement, but that Google infringed copyrights in the 37 Java packages and a specific routine, “rangeCheck.” It returned a noninfringement verdict as to eight decompiled security files. The jury deadlocked on Google’s fair use defense. The district court held that the replicated elements of the 37 API packages, including the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization, were not subject to copyright and entered final judgment in favor of Google on copyright infringement claims, except with respect to rangeCheck and the eight decompiled files. The Federal Circuit affirmed as to the eight decompiled files that Google copied into Android and rangeCheck. The court reversed in part, finding that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection, and remanded for consideration of fair use.View "Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc." on Justia Law

A patent specification must “conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as [the] invention,” 35 U.S.C. 112. The 753 patent involves a heart-rate monitor used with exercise equipment; it asserts that prior monitors were often inaccurate in measuring the electrical signals accompanying each heartbeat (ECG signals) because of the presence of other electrical signals generated by the user’s skeletal muscles that can impede ECG signal detection. The invention claims to improve on prior art by detecting and processing ECG signals in a way that filters out the interference. Claim 1 refers to a “heart rate monitor for use by a user in association with exercise apparatus and/or exercise procedures.” The claim comprises a cylindrical bar fitted with a display device; electronic circuitry including a difference amplifier; and, on each half of the bar, a “live” electrode and a “common” electrode “mounted ... in spaced relationship with each other.” The exclusive licensee alleged that Nautilus, without obtaining a license, sold exercise machines containing its patented technology. The district court granted Nautilus summary judgment on the ground that the claim term “in spaced relationship with each other” failed the definiteness requirement. The Federal Circuit reversed, concluding that a patent claim passes the threshold so long as the claim is “amenable to construction,” and, as construed, is not “insolubly ambiguous.” The Supreme Court vacated. A patent is invalid for indefiniteness if its claims, read in light of the patent’s specification and prosecution history, fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention. Section 112’s definiteness requirement must take into account the inherent limitations of language. The standard mandates clarity, while recognizing that absolute precision is unattainable. The Federal Circuit inquired whether the claims were “amenable to construction” or “insolubly ambiguous,” but such formulations lack the precision section 112 demands. To tolerate imprecision just short of that rendering a claim “insolubly ambiguous” would diminish the definiteness requirement’s public-notice function and foster the innovation-discouraging “zone of uncertainty.” The Court remanded so that the Federal Circuit can reconsider, under the proper standard, whether the relevant claims in the 753 patent are sufficiently definite. View "Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc" on Justia Law

Akamai is the exclusive licensee of a patent that claims a method of delivering electronic data using a content delivery network (CDN). Limelight also operates a CDN and carries out several of the steps claimed in the patent, but its customers, rather than Limelight itself, perform a step of the patent known as “tagging.” Under Federal Circuit case law, liability for direct infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(a) requires performance of all steps of a method patent to be attributable to a single party. The district court concluded that Limelight could not have directly infringed the patent at issue because performance of the tagging step could not be attributed to it. The en banc Federal Circuit reversed, holding that a defendant who performed some steps of a method patent and encouraged others to perform the rest could be liable for inducement of infringement even if no one was liable for direct infringement. The Supreme Court reversed. A defendant is not liable for inducing infringement under section 271(b) when no one has directly infringed. The Federal Circuit’s contrary view would deprive section 271(b) of ascertainable standards and require the courts to develop parallel bodies of infringement law. Citing section 271(f), the Court stated that Congress knows how to impose inducement liability predicated on noninfringing conduct when it wishes to do so. Though a would-be infringer could evade liability by dividing performance of a method patent’s steps with another whose conduct cannot be attributed to the defendant, a desire to avoid this consequence does not justify fundamentally altering the rules of inducement liability clearly required by the Patent Act’s text and structure. View "Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Techs, Inc." on Justia Law

Medtronic designs, makes, and sells medical devices. Mirowski owns patents relating to implantable heart stimulators. Under a licensing agreement, Medtronic practices certain Mirowski patents in exchange for royalty payments. Mirowski notified Medtronic of its belief that several Medtronic products infringed the licensed patents. Medtronic challenged that assertion in a declaratory judgment action, while accumulating disputed royalties in escrow for distribution to the prevailing party. The district court concluded that Mirowski had not met its burden of proving infringement. The Federal Circuit reversed, reasoning that where the patentee is a declaratory judgment defendant and, like Mirowski, is foreclosed from asserting an infringement counterclaim by the continued existence of a licensing agreement, the party seeking the declaratory judgment (Medtronic) bears the burden of persuasion. The Supreme Court reversed, first holding that the Federal Circuit did not lack subject-matter jurisdiction. Citing 28 U. S. C. 1338(a) and 1295(a)(1), the Court stated that if Medtronic had acted consistent with the understanding of its rights that it sought to establish in the declaratory judgment suit (by ceasing to pay royalties), Mirowski could have terminated the license and sued for infringement. The declaratory judgment action, which avoided that hypothetical threatened action, also “arises under” federal patent law. Operation of the Declaratory Judgment Act is only procedural, leaving substantive rights unchanged, and the burden of proof is a substantive aspect of a claim. When a licensee seeks a declaratory judgment against a patentee that its products do not infringe the licensed patent, the patentee bears the burden of persuasion. Mirowski set this dispute in motion by accusing Medtronic of infringement. There is no convincing reason why burden of proof law should favor the patentee. View "Medtronic, Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC" on Justia Law

In an infringement suit, the district court declared Minton’s patent invalid under the “on sale” bar since he had leased his interactive securities trading system to a brokerage more than one year before the patent application, 35 U. S. C. 102(b). Seeking reconsideration, Minton argued for the first time that the lease was part of testing and fell within the “experimental use” exception to the bar. The Federal Circuit affirmed denial of the motion, concluding that the argument was waived. Minton sued for legal malpractice in Texas state court. His former attorneys argued that Minton’s claims would have failed even if the experimental-use argument had been timely raised. The trial court agreed. Minton then claimed that the court lacked jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. 1338(a), which provides for exclusive federal jurisdiction over any case “arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents.” The Texas Court of Appeals rejected Minton’s argument and determined that Minton failed to establish experimental use. The state’s highest court reversed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Section 338(a) does not deprive state courts of subject matter jurisdiction over Minton’s malpractice claim. Federal law does not create that claim, so it can arise under federal patent law only if it necessarily raises a stated federal issue, actually disputed and substantial, which may be entertained without disturbing an approved balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities. Resolution of a federal patent question is “necessary” to Minton’s case and the issue is “actually disputed,” but it does not carry the necessary significance. No matter the resolution of the hypothetical “case within a case,” the result of the prior patent litigation will not change. Nor will allowing state courts to resolve these cases undermine development of a uniform body of patent law. View "Gunn v. Minton" on Justia Law

In 1995, respondent filed a patent application covering 117 claims under the Patent Act of 1952, 35 U.S.C. 112. The patent examiner denied all of the claims for lack of an adequate written description. Respondent appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, pursuant to section 134 of the Act, which approved some claims but denied others. Pursuant to section 145 of the Act, respondent filed a civil action against the Director, but the district court declined to consider respondent's newly proffered written declaration in support of the adequacy of his description, thus limiting its review to the administrative record. On appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated the judgment. The Court held that there are no limitations on a patent applicant's ability to introduce new evidence in a section 145 proceeding beyond those already present in the Federal Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. If new evidence was presented on a disputed question of fact, the district court must make de novo factual findings that take account of both the new evidence and the administrative record before the Patent and Trade Office. Therefore, the Court affirmed the judgment of the Federal Circuit. View "Kappos v. Hyatt" on Justia Law