Energy Transportation Group v William Demant Holding A/S

Defendants, William Demant et al, were found liable for the infringement of US Patent No. 4,731,850, held by Energy Transportation Group which relates to the reduction of feedback caused by an “acoustic feedback path” in the operation of a digital hearing aid. The Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision with regard to claim construction, denial of a new trial, and damages. In its analysis, the court held that the term “programmed” was not limited to an external computer as embodied in the ’850 specification and further that the court was not willing to impute “an artificial temporally-dictated limitation on the term” merely because the embodiment reflected the limitations imposed by the “size and complexity of computers . . . in 1986.” Further, the court held that the jury was presented with sufficient evidence from which they could conclude, as they did, that the ’850 patent met the requirements for written description, were not anticipated, and that the patent was infringed, holding each in turn to have turned on matters of the credibility of experts and the inventor.

Full Citation: Energy Transportation Group v. William Demant Holding A/S, __ F.3d __, No. 2011-1487 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 12, 2012).

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Technology Patents LLC v T-Mobile (UK) LTD.

In this suit, regarding U.S. Patent No. RE39,870 which relates to a global paging system, Technology Patents named over 100 defendants, which fall in to three classes: 1) domestic carriers and handset companies, 2) software providers, and 3) foreign carriers. The foreign carriers were dismissed for want of personal jurisdictional and the Federal Circuit affirmed. The infringement claims against the domestic carriers and software providers were dismissed on summary judgment. The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s order pertaining to the domestic and foreign carriers, as to the software providers affirmed in part and reversed in part.

The primary claim construction issue which TPL raised centered around the term “receiving user” which the court constructed in light of its explicitly defined counterpart, “originating user,” as the individual not including the handset. The court went on to apply a similar analysis to the terms “predetermined order” and “designated” which were found to relate to affirmative actions of the receiving user.

With regard to the summary judgments of non-infringement, the Court upheld the district court’s ruling on the domestic carriers, reasoning that the distinction between carriers and country in which the receiving user is located is material as it is possible to be in “France, but never the less select a carrier with a German or Swiss country code.”

The only issue on which the district court was reversed was on the narrow issue of non-infringement with regard to the software providers. The Federal Circuit disagreed that the claims at issue implicated joint or divided infringement (requiring the actions of more than one party) and held that because the software providers “put into action or service” the accused technology it did not need to maintain physical control and therefore summary judgment on this theory was inappropriate.

Full Citation: Technology Patents LLC v. T-Mobile (UK) LTD., __ F.3d __, No. 2011-1581 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 17, 2012).

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Apple Inc. v Samsung Electronics

In the unfolding aftermath of the Apple v Samsung litigation, the Federal Circuit reversed a preliminary injunction against the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone as an abuse of discretion. In an opinion authored by Circuit Judge Prost, the Court considered 1) the allegation of irreparable harm “through the prism of the causal nexus analysis,” and 2) the likelihood of Apple’s success on the merits.

The patent at issue (U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604) relates to a “unified search” which enables the user to input a single query that is employed by multiple heuristic modules to retrieve results from multiple locations—prototypically, the ability of “Siri” to simultaneously search an iPhone’s contact list as well as Google for the same term.

Turning first to the issue of causality, the Court held that Apple had not sufficiently established that the functionality of the ‘604 patent played a driving role in consumers’ decision to buy Nexus phones and, when the district court had granted the injunction without making such a finding it abused its discretion. In the interest of judicial economy, the Court then addressed whether Apple had sufficiently demonstrated that it was likely to win on the merits. The Court examined the plain language of the claim and the prosecution history, finding that both the syntax and prior art references undermined the lower courts construction the Federal Circuit held that Apple was not likely to prevail on the merits.

Full Citation: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., __ F.3d __, No. 2012-1507 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 11, 2012).

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In re Miracle Tuesday, LLC

In this appeal from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), the federal circuit found that the petitioners Mark JPK PARIS 75 was “primarily geographically deceptively misdescriptive” in that it appears to indicate that the associated goods, fashion accessories, originate in Paris, France. The only connection between the goods and Paris that Miracle Tuesday proffered was that the designer spent some years in the city. The TTAB and the Federal Circuit both found this argument unpersuasive and the confusion material to the decision to purchase given Paris’ status as the cradle of fashion. Although the court indicated the outcome may have been swayed if there was any showing that the goods were designed in Paris, the absence of such evidence was dispositive. Miracle Tuesday asserted that in essence, the concern of geography with regard to fashion designers is their pedigree and not the location in which they do their work. Although there may be merit to the notion the court held that it was the goods that must contain the nexus of geography and origin.

Full Citation: In re Miracle Tuesday, LLC, __ F.3d __, No. 2011-1373 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 4, 2012).

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Sandisk Corp. v Kingston Tech Co., Inc

In this case pertaining to flash memory devices, Sandisk appeals the district court’s summary judgment for non-infringement. The Court, initially rejected Sandisk’s request to review several claim construction arguments because Sandisk voluntarily dropped the claims below thus the Federal Circuit had no jurisdiction. With respect to the claims that the Court did review, they pertain to Patent Nos. 6,763,424, 6,149,316 and 6,757,842. In a lengthy analysis of the methods described for the writing of smaller increments of data to flash memory without undue wear the Court rejected the lower court’s interpretation of the limitations “recording a relative time of programming ” and “at least a user data portion and an overhead portion” in several claims. Further, with regard to the issue of the placement of certain circuits on either the controller or the flash memory modules, the Court upheld the finding that there was no literal infringement but vacated the district court’s judgment that there was no infringement under the doctrine of equivalents.

Full Citation: Sandisk Corp. v. Kingston Tech Co., __ F.3d __, No. 2011-1346 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 9, 2012).

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Belkin International, Inc. v Kappos

In its pursuit of an inter partes reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 7,035,281 Belkin appeals the finding by the Board that three articles did not raise issues of patentability. The Court held that, under such a reexamination, when the Board makes a finding that a particular piece of prior art does not raise substantial new questions of patentability, under 35 USC § 312(c), such findings are not addressed by appeal but by petition. Moreover, the Court rejected Belkin’s argument that, because one piece of prior art was found to have raised substantial new questions of patentability, that all other prior art will again be considered. Further, the Court held that the decision that the implicated pieces of prior art did not raise such questions did not constitute a final judgment` permitting an appeal. Moreover, the Court held that to allow such an appeal would “impermissibly circumvent the statutory bar on appeals” which § 312(c) establishes.

Full Citation: Belkin International, Inc. v. Kappos, __ F.3d __, No. 2012-1090 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 2, 2012).

Find the full opinion here.