Eolas Technologies Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.

• Decision Date: 02 March 2005
• Docket Number: No. 04-1234.,04-1234.
• Citation: 399 F.3d 1325
• Parties: EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED and the Regents of the University of California, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

399 F.3d 1325

EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED and the Regents of the University of California, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 04-1234.

United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit.

March 2, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Martin R. Lueck, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., of Minneapolis, Minnesota, argued for plaintiff-appellees. With him on the brief were Jan M. Conlin, Richard M. Martinez, and Munir R. Meghjee. Of counsel was Emily M. Rome.

Constantine L. Trela, Jr., Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, of Chicago, Illinois, argued for defendant-appellant. With him on the brief were David T. Pritikin, Richard A. Cederoth, Robert N. Hochman, and Carter G. Phillips, of Washington, DC. Of counsel on the brief were H. Michael Hartmann, Brett A. Hesterberg, and Steven P. Petersen, Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd., of Chicago, Illinois. Of counsel was Thomas Andrew Culbert, Microsoft Corporation, of Redmond, Washington.

Gregory S. Coleman, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, of Austin, Texas, for amicus curiae Oracle Corporation. With him on the brief were Matthew D. Powers and Edward R. Reines, of Redwood Shores, California.

John D. Vandenberg, Klarquist Sparkman, LLP, of Portland, Oregon, for amici curiae Autodesk, Inc., et al.

Charles K. Verhoeven, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, of San Francisco, California, for amici curiae Netscape Communications Corporation, et al. With him on the brief were David A. Perlson and Jennifer A. Kash.

Gerard M. Stegmaier, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, of Reston, Virginia, for amicus curiae Association For Competitive Technology. With him on the brief was Craig M. Tyler.

Before RADER, Circuit Judge, FRIEDMAN, and PLAGER, Senior Circuit Judges.

RADER, Circuit Judge.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted final judgment to Eolas Technologies Incorporated and the Regents of the University of California (collectively, Eolas) after a jury found that Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) infringed claims 1 and 6 of U.S. Patent No. 5,838,906 (the '906 patent) and actively induced United States users of Internet Explorer to infringe claim 1. The district court also invoked 35 U.S.C. § 271(f) to include foreign sales of Internet Explorer in the royalty awarded to Eolas. Because the district court improperly granted judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) in Eolas' favor on Microsoft's anticipation and obviousness defenses and improperly rejected Microsoft's inequitable conduct defense, this court vacates the district court's decision and remands for a new trial on these issues. In addition, this court affirms the district court's claim construction of "executable application" and finds the district court did not err in its jury instruction with regard to the claim limitation "utilized by said browser to identify and locate." Finally, this court affirms the district court's holding that "components," according to section 271(f)(1), includes software code on golden master disks.

I.

On February 2, 1999, Eolas brought an infringement action against Microsoft. In particular, Eolas alleged infringement of claims 1 and 6 of the '906 patent.¹ The '906 patent carries the title "distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document." Eolas alleged that certain aspects of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) product incorporate its invention. Microsoft denied infringement and asserted that the claims were invalid and unenforceable.

Essentially, the claimed invention allows a user to use a web browser in a fully interactive environment. For example, the invention enables a user to view news clips or play games across the Internet. The '906 claims require a web browser with certain properties. Specifically, the invention calls for a browser located in a "distributed hypermedia environment."

In operation, the claimed browser locates a web page, or distributed hypermedia document, with a uniform resource locator (URL). Then the browser parses the text of the web page including an "embed text format" specifying an object external to the web page that has "type information associated with it" (i.e., spreadsheets, databases). The browser next uses that type information to identify and locate an executable application that automatically enables interactive viewing of the object. The inventors have consistently maintained that "[t]his invention was the first instance where interactive applications were embedded in Web pages." The district court found that the invention was reduced to practice no later than January 27, 1994, when it was presented at a Web conference.

During prosecution of the '906 patent, the examiner rejected the claims several times for obviousness. Besides the World Wide Web, HTTP and HTML, the examiner cited three main prior art references during prosecution: (1) the Mosaic Web Browser, which allows users to go from one website to another by clicking links on web pages and has some capability to display objects; (2) U.S. Patent No. 5,206,951 to Khoyi et al. (Khoyi), which describes an Object Linking and Embedding System (OLE);² and (3) U.S. Patent No. 5,581,686 to Koppolu et al. (Koppolu), which covers some OLE technology where the application displaying data may be a component, such as an object handler that is implemented as a Dynamically Linked Library (DLL).³ The examiner allowed the claims on March 30, 1998.

Microsoft's Invalidity Defenses

At trial, Microsoft presented evidence that the Viola Web browser (Viola), invented by Pei-Yuan Wei (Wei), was in public use more than one year before Eolas' invention. Microsoft asserted that this prior art would invalidate the invention under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). Microsoft also used the Viola reference to challenge validity on the basis of sections 102(a), 102(g) and 103. Wei testified at trial that he had written code for Viola so that the browser could handle embedded automatically-launched interactive programs in May 1993. Wei testified as well that he demonstrated that capability to Sun Microsystems engineers at that time. Microsoft corroborated existence of this code at trial through a computer demonstration of an archived file, dated May 12, 1993. The parties refer to this version of Viola as DX34. Wei demonstrated DX34 to two Sun Microsystems engineers on May 7, 1993.

Wei also demonstrated a different version of Viola to the district court. This second exhibit, DX37, was allegedly Wei's attempt on May 27, 1993, to improve DX34. Apparently due to a bug in the program, Wei could not make the DX37 version function in the courtroom in conjunction with the Internet. Microsoft's technical expert testified that both versions of the Viola code taught all of the limitations of the claims at issue.

The district court found as a matter of law that Wei abandoned, suppressed or concealed DX34 within the meaning of section 102(g) because Wei disclosed that version only to the Sun engineers and then changed it. The district court extended this finding to section 102(b) and found as a matter of law that since DX34 was abandoned showing it to the Sun engineers could not constitute a public use. The district court prevented Microsoft from presenting any evidence of DX34 to the jury and later granted Eolas' Rule 50 motion for JMOL in ruling that neither the anticipation nor obviousness defenses could be presented to the jury after hearing testimony on those issues from Microsoft's expert.

Microsoft's Inequitable Conduct Defense

Michael D. Doyle (Doyle), one of the inventors of the '906 patent, knew of Viola yet did not disclose any information regarding that reference to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). On August 31, 1994, Doyle issued a press release to an e-mail list indicating that researchers at the University of California had "created software for embedding interactive program objects within hypermedia documents." That same day, Wei contacted Doyle via e-mail in response to the press release. Wei alleged that his May 1993 demonstration of Viola (version DX34) to Sun Microsystems engineers exhibited a way to embed interactive objects and transport them over the web. Wei directed Doyle to his paper about Viola (the Viola paper), which was available on the Internet at least by August 13, 1994. Doyle downloaded and read the paper. In a later email exchange, Doyle attempted to get Wei to concede that he was not the first to invent. Additionally, Doyle told Wei the inventions were different.

On October 17, 1994, the University of California filed the '906 patent application. In 1998, before issuance of the '906 patent, Doyle did more research on Viola and made a folder labeled "Viola stuff." This folder included press releases of two "beta"⁴ versions of Viola from February and March of 1994. Although available on the Internet, Doyle never obtained the Viola code.

The district court found that Doyle's knowledge of Viola was not enough to trigger his obligation to bring it to the attention of the examiner of the '906 patent. The district court determined that Viola was not prior art and as such not material. Although questioning Doyle's credibility about his role in the prosecution of the patent, the trial court nonetheless found that he had acted with candor before the PTO because "it was the law and it was too dangerous not to do so."

Claim Construction for Infringement

Claim 1 is a method claim; claim 6 a product claim. The parties and the district court focused on claim 6 to interpret the claims because Eolas asserted that the computer program product in claim 6 embodies the method of claim 1. Claim 6 reads:

6. A computer program product for use in a system having at least one client workstation and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hyperrnedia...