Justia Patents Opinion Summaries

Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada, owns patents directed to Attentive User Interfaces, which allow devices to change their behavior based on the attentiveness of a user—for example, pausing or starting a video based on a user’s eye-contact with the device. Queen’s sued, alleging that Samsung’s SmartPause feature infringed those patents. Throughout fact discovery, Queen’s University refused to produce certain documents. It produced privilege logs that withheld documents based on its assertion of a privilege relating to communications with its patent agents. A magistrate granted Samsung’s motion to compel, finding that the communications between Queen’s University employees and their non-attorney patent agents are not subject to the attorney-client privilege and that a separate patent-agent privilege does not exist. The district court declined to certify the issue for interlocutory appeal, but agreed to stay the production of the documents at issue pending a petition for writ of mandamus. The Federal Circuit granted that petition, finding that, consistent with Federal Rule of Evidence 501, a patent-agent privilege is justified “in the light of reason and experience” and extends to communications with non-attorney patent agents when those agents are acting within the agent’s authorized practice of law before the Patent Office. View "In Re: Queen's Univ. at Kingston" on Justia Law

ltimatePointer’s patent, entitled “Easily Deployable Interactive Direct-Pointing System and Presentation Control System and Calibration Method Therefor,” describes a handheld pointing device that can be used to control the cursor on a projected computer screen, thereby improving a presenter’s ability to control the cursor while making a presentation to an audience. The district court entered summary judgment that Nintendo did not infringe five claims of the patent and that four claims were invalid as indefinite. The Federal Circuit affirmed the judgment of noninfringement, stating that the lower court did not err in construing the term “handheld device.” The court reversed the determination of indefiniteness; the claims do not recite functionality divorced from the cited structure and do not reflect an attempt to claim both an apparatus and a method, but instead claim an apparatus with particular capabilities. View "Ultimatepointer, L.L.C. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd." on Justia Law

Avid’s patent is directed to a “system for decompressing consecutive streams of compressed video data to provide a continuous, uninterrupted decompressed video data output stream.” Many computers store video in a compressed form. One well-known compression format is MPEG. Instead of storing every video frame in full, MPEG stores only changes in one frame to the next. Before compressed video files can be played, they must be decompressed. Methods to compress and decompress videos were well known at the time of the patent application. The patent discloses that these prior art methods often generated blank frames between first and second videos when playing multiple compressed videos back-to-back due to system latency and purports to teach a system that allows play of compressed video streams one after the other without creating blank frames or a video-less gap when switching between streams by using multiple decompression buffers. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted inter partes review on a subset of the grounds in Harmonic’s petition and determined that the instituted ground did not render claims of the patent unpatentable. The Federal Circuit affirmed confirmation of claims 11–16 over the instituted ground and concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to review the Board’s institution decision. View "Harmonic, Inc. v. Avid Tech., Inc.." on Justia Law

The Blue Calypso Patents are all related and describe a peer-to-peer advertising system that uses mobile communication devices. At the request of Groupon, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted Covered Business Method (CBM) review of the Blue Calypso Patents under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA).The Board found certain claims unpatentable under either 35 U.S.C. 102, 103, or 112. The Federal Circuit affirmed that the patents are CBM patents that do not claim a technological invention and that certain claims were anticipated, but reversed the Board’s conclusion that the claim terms “endorsement tag” and “token,” as used in the 516 patent lack written description support. View "Blue Calypso, LLC. v. Groupon, Inc." on Justia Law

The patents teach improved techniques for making artificial candles flicker like real candles and were developed for the DIsneyland “Haunted Mansion.” In 2008, Disney granted Candella a worldwide license to practice the technology. In 2010, Candella approached Liown to manufacture its candles. Negotiations broke down. Liown filed a patent application in China on flameless candles, allegedly based on confidential information obtained during negotiations with Candella. In 2012, Liown began selling flameless candles in the U.S. Disney and Candella amended the license to permit Candella to sublicense, to assign its interest with Disney’s consent, and to sue without Disney’s consent. Candella sued Liown for infringement. The parties settled and reopened negotiations for Liown to manufacture flameless candles using the technology. The relationship again deteriorated. Days after receiving its own U.S. patent covering similar artificial flame technology, Liown advised Candella that it would no longer comply with the settlement agreement and allegedly began selling its own flameless candles to Candella’s exclusive customers based on information it learned after the settlement proceedings. Candella again filed suit. The court granted a preliminary injunction, based on the alleged infringement without reaching the alternative ground of tortious interference. The Federal Circuit vacated, finding a substantial question of patent validity. View "Luminara Worldwide, LLC v. Liown Elecs. Co. Ltd." on Justia Law

Eon’s patents relate to a two-way interactive communication network system for enabling communications between local subscribers and a base station and describe various contexts in which the described networks might be useful: broadcast television programs; wireless facsimile services; pay-per-view services; when the subscriber unit is located in a location where it would otherwise lack ability to receive transmissions; meter reading; inventory control in soft drink dispensing machines; and site alarms for remote monitoring of open doors, fires, failure, temperature, etc. Eon sued SIlver Spring, a utility services network provider, and won an infringement verdict of $18,800,000. The district court reversed as to one of the three patents and remitted the award to $12,990,800. The Federal Circuit reversed, holding that no reasonable jury could have found that Silver Spring’s utility meters are “portable” and “mobile” in the context of the claimed invention; those meters do not infringe the two remaining patents. View "Eon Corp. IP Holdings LLC v. Silver Spring Networks, Inc." on Justia Law

Apple alleged infringement of five patents that cover various aspects of the operation of smartphones. . The district court entered awarded Apple $119,625,000 in damages and ongoing royalties for infringement of three patents. The jury found that Samsung had not infringed the other two. Samsung’s countersuit alleged infringement of two patents that it owns. The jury found Apple had infringed one patent and awarded $158,400 in damages but found that Apple had not infringed the other. The Federal Circuit reversed in part, finding that Apple failed to prove, as a matter of law, that the accused Samsung products use an “analyzer server” as the Federal Circuit has previously construed that term with respect to one Apple patent and that the asserted claims of two Apple patents would have been obvious based on the prior art. The court affirmed the judgment of non-infringement of two Apple patents, affirmed the judgment of infringement of Samsung’s patent, and affirmed the judgment of noninfringement of Samsung’s other patent. View "Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elec. Co., Ltd." on Justia Law

Fellowes obtained the 468 patent, claiming a shredder that prevents paper jams using a combination of a presence sensor that detects whether paper is present in the feed and a thickness sensor that detects whether the stack’s thickness risks exceeding the shredder’s capacity. The patent further claims a controller that turns the shredder motor on only when those sensors indicate paper is present in the feed that does not exceed the shredder’s thickness capacity. Because prior art contained both sensors, Fellowes claimed nonobviousness based on its particular combination of these elements. Fellowes sued ACCO for infringement. The Patent and Trademark Office granted reexamination. An examiner found a prima facie case that certain claims would have been an obvious combination of prior art. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board reversed, finding that the examiner failed to make a prima facie showing of obviousness. The Federal Circuit reversed, holding that the examiner made this prima facie showing, and remanded to allow the Board to consider issues that it did not reach below: whether Fellowes’ rebuttal evidence changes the outcome on obviousness and whether the dependent claims at issue provide independent grounds of nonobviousness. View "ACCO Brands Corp. v. Fellowes, Inc." on Justia Law

Optical character recognition (OCR) systems analyze characters in a scanned image using various techniques. Template matching involves comparing a character in the digital image with templates of known characters. If there is no matching template, feature analysis is used: examining the characteristics of unknown characters to determine what they are. Sometimes template matching and feature analysis result in more than one possible character—such as a lowercase or uppercase “S”—in which case context analysis is used to look to the character’s special context and linguistic context to determine the correct character. Nuance’s 342 patent describes template matching and feature analysis and using the results of the feature analysis to build new templates that can later be used in the first step of template matching. In Nuance’s suit, a jury returned a verdict of non-infringement. The Federal Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the district court improperly adopted a dictionary definition for disputed claim limitations and that Nuance was denied due process when the court entered final judgment against Nuance as to all of its patents, even those that Nuance chose not to assert at trial. View "Nuance Commc'ns, Inc. v. ABBYY USA Software House, Inc." on Justia Law

A coaxial cable has an inner electrical conductor (signal) and an outer electrical conductor (ground). Poor or intermittent connections on either conductor can result in noise or non-functionality. The 060 patent discloses coaxial cable connectors having a connector body, a post, a nut (coupler), and a “continuity member” that contacts the post and the nut so that electrical grounding continuity is extended through the post and the nut. The patent discloses more than 20 embodiments of continuity members. In some embodiments, the continuity member lays adjacent to or extends underneath the connector body. Corning sought inter partes review of claims 10–25. Relying on a generalist dictionary, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board construed the term “reside around” to mean “in the immediate vicinity of; near” and concluded that the combination of prior published patent applications taught a continuity member that was positioned in the immediate vicinity of, or near, an external portion of the connector body, so that the claims were obvious. The Federal Circuit vacated, finding that the Board erred in its construction of “reside around.” View "PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Corning Optical Commc'ns RF, LLC" on Justia Law