Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions
1. SOUND VIEW INNOVATIONS, LLC v. HULU, LLC [OPINION] (2021-1998, 05/11/2022) (Prost, Meyer, Taranto)
Taranto, J. The Court vacated and remanded the district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement of a patent directed to “streaming multimedia information over public networks.” The Court’s decision to vacate was based on its rejection of one of the district court’s claim constructions. The Court explained that “[w]hat was needed was an affirmative construction of ‘buffer’—which could then be compared to the accused-component ‘caches’…. The district court did not supply the needed construction.” The Court left it to the district court to decide what construction of “buffer” should be adopted on remand. In addition, the Court concluded that the plaintiff’s expert’s damages opinion was unreliable because, among other things, it relied on studies without showing that the studies were “sufficiently tied to the invention as claimed” and without accounting for the differences between the circumstances of the studies and the accused streaming services.
2. ATLANTA GAS LIGHT COMPANY v. BENNETT REGULATOR GUARDS, INC. [OPINION] (2021-1759, 05/13/2022) (Newman, Lourie, Stoll)
Stoll, J. The Court dismissed an appeal of a PTAB decision terminating an IPR as time-barred under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b). The Court held that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal because the PTAB’s time-bar determinations are unreviewable under 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) and Thryv, Inc v. Click-To-Call Technologies, LP, 140 S. Ct. 1367 (2020). The Court explained that “when the Board chooses to vacate its institution decision, even on remand, § 314(d)’s no-appeal bar makes clear that it is outside of our jurisdiction to review.”
3. GOOGLE LLC v. IPA TECHNOLOGIES INC. [OPINION] (2021-1179, 2021-1180, 2021-1185, 5/19/2022) (Dyk, Schall, Taranto)
Dyk, J. The Court vacated and remanded three IPR decisions because the PTAB “failed to resolve fundamental testimonial conflicts in concluding that the relied-upon reference was not prior art.” The Court explained that, given the conflicting testimony of the parties’ witnesses, the PTAB’s finding that all the witnesses were “credible” was “not a tenable position.”
4. MITEK SYSTEMS, INC. v. UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION [OPINION] (2021-1989, 05/20/2022) (Dyk, Taranto, Cunningham)
Taranto, J. The Court (1) affirmed the transfer of an action for declaratory judgment of non-infringement from the Northern District of California to the Eastern District of Texas and (2) vacated and remanded the Texas court’s dismissal for lack of jurisdiction based on its conclusion that there was no case-or-controversy between the parties. The Court explained that it was remanding because the parties addressed the case-or-controversy issue at “too high a level of generality” and the district court did not give sufficient reasons for declining to hear the case.
5. KAUFMAN v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION [OPINION] (2021-1634, 2021-1691, 05/20/2022) (Dyk, Reyna, Taranto)
Taranto, J. The Court affirmed a judgment finding all asserted patent claims valid and infringed. The Court explained that the asserted patent “describes and claims methods for using a computer to automatically generate an end-user interface for working with the data in a relational database.” In rejecting the defendant’s arguments, the Court found that the defendant failed to preserve its claim construction arguments before the district court. The Court further held that the defendant failed to establish that the district court had erred “in its claim construction or that the jury’s verdict was not supported by substantial evidence.” The Court also agreed with the district court that the conjunction “and” in the relevant limitation means “and/or” because, among other reasons, interpreting “and” in its conjunctive sense would exclude the sole embodiment of the patent. Finally, the Court concluded the district court abused its discretion in denying the plaintiff prejudgment interest.
