Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc.

• Decision Date: 01 August 2014
• Docket Number: No. 2013–1212.,2013–1212.
• Citation: 761 F.3d 1329
• Parties: AMDOCS (ISRAEL) LIMITED, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. OPENET TELECOM, INC., and Openet Telecom Ltd., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

761 F.3d 1329

AMDOCS (ISRAEL) LIMITED, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.OPENET TELECOM, INC., and Openet Telecom Ltd., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 2013–1212.

United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit.

Aug. 1, 2014.

S. Calvin Walden, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, of New York, New York, argued for plaintiff-appellant. With him on the brief were Nels T. Lippert; James L. Quarles, III, Gregory H. Lantier, Joshua M. Salzman, and Brittany Blueitt Amadi, of Washington, DC.

James H. Wallace, Jr., Wiley Rein LLP, of Washington, DC, argued for defendants-appellees. With him on the brief were Anthony H. Son, Brian H. Pandya, Eric H. Weisblatt, Joseph Shin, and Adrienne G. Johnson.

Before NEWMAN, CLEVENGER, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

Opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part filed by Circuit Judge NEWMAN.

REYNA, Circuit Judge.

This is a patent infringement case on appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Appellant Amdocs (Israel) Limited (“Amdocs”) asserted four related patents against Appellees Openet Telecom, Inc. and Openet Telecom Ltd. (collectively “Openet”), seeking damages and injunctions.

Amdocs and Openet compete in the market for “data mediation software,” which helps internet service providers (“ISPs”), such as Verizon and AT & T, track their customer's network usage and subsequently generate bills. When a customer sends an email, surfs the internet, sends a text message, or participates in a video conference, records of this network activity (“network records”) are generated at various, disparate locations throughout an ISP's network. Data mediation software collects, processes, and compiles these network records so that network usage can be tracked and billed appropriately.

Before the district court, Openet moved for summary judgment of noninfringement of the four patents. With regard to three of the patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 7,631,065 (the “'065 Patent”), 7,412,510 (the “'510 Patent”), and 6,947,984 (the “'984 Patent”), Openet argued that Amdocs was unable to point to actual infringing use and that the accused products did not practice all claim limitations. The district court granted Openet's motion based on its finding that Amdocs did not raise a genuine question of material fact as to whether the accused devices practiced “completing” or “enhance [ing]” “in a distributed fashion,” a requirement which it construed to be common to all asserted claims. We agree with the court's construction of enhancement and completion but we find that Amdocs' documentary evidence describing the structure and operation of the accused product creates genuine factual issues regarding whether the product meets these constructions. Accordingly, for these three patents, we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment and remand.

The district court also granted summary judgment of noninfringement of the fourth patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,836,797 (the “'797 Patent”). Because this finding is based on an erroneous claim construction, we vacate and remand for determination of infringement under the proper claim construction.

I. Introduction

A. The Asserted Patents

The district court provides the following summary of the patented technology:

All of these patents claim parts of a system that is designed to solve an accounting and billing problem faced by network service providers. Customers of network service providers often use several distinct services, such as e-mail, voice over Internet Protocol, or streaming audio or video, on the same computer network. Because some services require more bandwidth than others, network service providers “would like to price their available bandwidth according to a user's needs,” for example by billing business customers “according to their used bandwidth at particular qualities of service.” The raw usage logs for these services, however, are generated by several different network devices that may exist in different network levels. The patented system collects these raw usage data records from their diffuse locations throughout the network and through appropriate filtering, aggregation, correlation, and enhancement transforms them into a format suitable for accounting, called “detail records” (“DRs”). These DRs can then be stored in a central repository for generating “auditing, accounting and billing reports” or “can be sent directly to other systems,” including billing systems.

Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., No. 1:10–cv–910, 2013 WL 265602, at *2 (E.D.Va. Jan. 22, 2013) (citations and footnotes omitted) [hereinafter District Court Op.]. The four patents are related, but each is directed to a different aspect of the subject matter.

B. The '065 Patent

As the district court succinctly summarized, “[t]he '065 patent describes the invention's primary function, which is the collection and transformation of network accounting records.” Id. at *3. Amdocs asserts independent claims 1, 7, and 13 and dependent claims 4 and 17.

The asserted claims recite:

1. A computer program product embodied on a computer readable storage medium for processing network accounting information comprising:

computer code for receiving from a first source a first network accounting record;

computer code for correlating the first network accounting record with accounting information available from a second source; and

computer code for using the accounting information with which the first network accounting record is correlated to enhance the first network accounting record.

4. The computer program product embodied on a computer readable storage medium of claim 3,¹ wherein the accounting information is in the form of a second network accounting record.

7. A method of processing network accounting information comprising:

receiving from a first source a first network accounting record;

correlating the first network accounting record with accounting information available from a second source; and

using the accounting information with which the first network accounting record is correlated to enhance the first network accounting record.

13. A system for collecting data from network entities for a data consuming application, comprising:

a plurality of data collectors to receive information from the network entities and to produce records based on the information, each data collector in the plurality of data collectors being associated with and coupled to a different one of the network entities; and

an enhancement component that augments data in one of the records produced by one of the plurality of data collectors with data from a different one of the records produced by another of the plurality of data collectors.

17. The system of claim 13, further comprising:

a module coupled to the plurality of data collectors, the module receives the records produced by the plurality of data collectors for aggregation purposes, and wherein the enhancement component resides in the module.

In relevant part, these 5 claims can be generalized as:

• receiving network accounting “record[s]” from different “source[s]” or “data collectors;” and

• “enhanc[ing]” the “record” from a “source” or from a “data collector” with the information.

C. The '984 and '510 Patents

“The '984 patent and the '510 patent, which is a continuation of the ' 984 patent, describe methods and computer program products for creating reports based on the generated DRs, and for sending alerts based on those reports. The asserted claims also include limitations that describe in detail the core collection and conversion of network usage records.” District Court Op. at *3. Amdocs asserts independent claims 1 and 13 and dependent claims 2, 6, and 8 of the '984 Patent, and independent claim 16 and dependent claims 17 and 19 of the '510 Patent.

The asserted '984 Patent claims recite:

1. A method for reporting on the collection of network usage information from a plurality of network devices, comprising:

(a) collecting network communications usage information in real-time from a plurality of network devices at a plurality of layers utilizing multiple gatherers each including a plurality of information source modules each interfacing with one of the network devices and capable of communicating using a protocol specific to the network device coupled thereto, the network devices selected from the group consisting of routers, switches, firewalls, authentication servers, web hosts, proxy servers, netflow servers, databases, mail servers, RADIUS servers, and domain name servers, the gatherers being positioned on a segment of the network on which the network devices coupled thereto are positioned for minimizing an impact of the gatherers on the network;

(b) filtering and aggregating the network communications usage information;

(c) completing a plurality of data records from the filtered and aggregated network communications usage information, the plurality of data records corresponding to network usage by a plurality of users;

(d) storing the plurality of data records in a database;

(e) allowing the selection of one of a plurality of reports for reporting purposes;

(f) submitting queries to the database utilizing the selected reports for retrieving information on the collection of the network usage information from the network devices; and

(g) outputting a report based on the queries.

2. A method as recited in claim 1, and further comprising submitting network activity queries to the database utilizing the selected reports for retrieving information on activity of the network.

6. A method as recited in claim 2, and further comprising generating an alert upon the occurrence of an event.

8. A method as recited in claim 6, wherein the alert indicates that services should be ceased.

13. A computer program product embedded into computer readable medium for reporting on the collection of network usage information from a plurality of network devices, comprising:

(a) computer code for collecting network...