Metrologic Instruments v. Symbol Technologies
| Decision Date | 29 September 2006 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 03-2912 (HAA). |
| Citation | 460 F.Supp.2d 571 |
| Parties | METROLOGIC INSTRUMENTS, INC., Plaintiff, v. SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
Edwin F. Chociey, Jr., Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti LLP, Lisa Marie Jarmicki, Riker, Danzig, Morristown, NJ, for Plaintiff.
William J. Heller, McCarter & English, LLP, Newark, NJ, for Defendant.
This case presents one facet of a broader, multi-forum dispute between Metrologic Instruments, Inc. ("Metrologic") and Symbol Technologies, Inc. ("Symbol"), two close competitors in the design, development, manufacture, and sale of laser scanning bar code readers. Metrologic accuses Symbol of infringing three of its patents relating to automatically-operated laser bar code readers. With discovery completed, the Court must now determine the meanings of various disputed claims contained in the contested patents in accordance with the instruction of Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 976-79 (Fed.Cir.1995) (en banc), aff'd, 517 U.S. 370, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d 577 (1996). The Court held a hearing for this purpose on March 27, 2006. Subsequently, and with the consent of counsel, the Court submitted seven supplemental questions to the parties, and the parties filed their respective responses on April 24, 2006. The Court has carefully considered all of the parties' written and oral arguments. In the Opinion that follows, the Court sets forth its constructions of the patent claims in dispute.
The inventions described by the patents in suit are directed toward automatically-operated laser bar code readers, whose function is to scan and decode bar code symbols. Bar code symbols assume a variety of forms, but are most familiar to the lay public as the UPC bar code symbol commonly found on grocery items. These bar code symbols consist of a series of bars and spaces of contrasting darkness imprinted on a surface; the relative widths of the bars and spaces encode a numerical sequence. That numerical sequence, in turn, corresponds to a useful piece of information, such as the identity of the grocery item on which the bar code symbol is imprinted. Thus, an operator equipped with a laser bar code reader may quickly retrieve detailed information encoded in the bar code symbol.
Laser bar code readers may be either hand held or fixed mounted. In some readers, the laser beam is off until a sensor detects the presence of an object in the vicinity of the reader. A signal from the sensor then causes the laser beam to turn on, or "initiate," automatically. This general process is known as "object detection" and is a common feature of "automatic" laser bar code readers. Object detection may take place before the laser bar code reader scans an object with the laser beam.
Most laser bar code readers today contain many of the same basic elements. A laser diode emits a laser beam that is directed to a mirror known generally as the "scanning mirror." The scanning mirror is moved by a motor, thereby projecting the beam in a pattern. When the laser beam crosses the bar code symbol, the laser light is reflected off the bar code symbol, with the white spaces reflecting more light than the black bars.
Some of the laser light reflected off of bar code symbols and other objects returns to the bar code reader, where it is detected by a component of the bar code reader known as a photoreceiver. A photoreceiver often consists of a photodiode, a device that converts light energy into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is an electronic representation of the object scanned by the laser beam. When the scanned object is a bar code symbol, the electrical signal represents the bar-and-space pattern.
A bar code reader must be able to differentiate between the laser light reflected by a bar code and the laser light reflected by other objects. The bar code reader accomplishes this task by performing one or more tests on the electrical signal generated by the photoreceiver. By analyzing the electrical signal in this manner, the bar code reader is able to detect electrical signals representing the bar-and-space pattern of a bar code symbol. This process is known generally as "bar code detection."
Once the bar code reader has determined that the electrical signal represents a bar code, the bar code reader will proceed to "decode" the bar code in order to recover the encoded information (known as "character...
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