Jobdiva, Inc. v. Monster Worldwide, Inc.
| Decision Date | 03 October 2014 |
| Docket Number | 13-cv-8229 (KBF) |
| Parties | JOBDIVA, INC., Plaintiff, v. MONSTER WORLDWIDE, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
On November 18, 2013, JobDiva, Inc. ("JobDiva") sued Monster Worldwide, Inc. ("Monster") for patent infringement. JobDiva's claims relate to four patents:
3. U.S. Patent No. 8,280,823 (the "'823 Patent"), titled "Recruitment Management and Recruitment Workflow System and Method," issued on October 2, 2012; and
4. U.S. Patent No. 8,463,715 (the "'715 Patent"), titled "Resume Management and Recruitment Workflow System and Method," issued on June 11, 2013.
Each of these patents relates to an invention to make the process of providing access to searching resumes easier and more accurate.
On January 9, 2014, Monster counterclaimed for declarations of noninfringement and invalidity with regard to each of JobDiva's patents, and for infringement with regard to its own U.S. Patent No. 5,832,497 (the "'497 Patent"), titled "Electronic Automated Information Exchange and Management System," issued on November 3, 1998. Monster's patent seeks provide a system to manage the exchange of information through two databases, particularly in the employment setting. It seeks to permit on-line storing and access to a jobs database through a search engine and to manage job applications and submissions of resumes.
Before the Court is the parties' request for claim construction with regard to the following terms in JobDiva's Patents1:
b. "parsed resume . . . satisfying the search criteria," as used in JobDiva's '823 Patent;
c. "matching resume that satisfies the job description," as used in JobDiva's '221 Patent; and
d. "skill or experience-related phrase includes said at least one required skill or experience-related phrase, or at least one implying phrase for said at least one required skill or experience-related phrase, that satisfies the job description," as used in JobDiva's '715 Patent;
E. "means for receiving a result set in response to the database query," as used in JobDiva's '573, '823, and '715 Patents;
F. "means for sending a database query to the resume database," as used in JobDiva's '573, '823, and '715 Patents;
G. "graphical user interface, comprising a first display region . . .; and a second display region," as used in JobDiva's '221 Patent; and
H. "personal and business-related characteristics that the candidate believes to be relevant to a prospective employer," as used in JobDiva's '221 Patent.
(See Joint Claim Construction and Prehearing Statement, ECF No. 34.)
With respect to Monster's Patent, the parties have requested that the Court construe the following term2:
I. "iterative database query engine," as used in Monster's '497 Patent. (See Joint Claim Construction and Prehearing Statement for Monster Countercl., ECF No. 36.)
The Court held a Markman hearing over two days on July 11, 2014 and August 1, 2014.3 At that hearing, experts for both sides testified and were subject to cross-examination.
JobDiva proffered the report and testimony of two experts: Michael Mitzenmacher, Ph.D., for the disputed terms appearing in JobDiva's '573, '715, '823, and '221 Patents, and Nathaniel Polish, Ph.D, with regard to the disputed term in Monster's '497 Patent. Monster also proffered the report and testimony of two experts: Jaime G. Carbonell, Ph.D., with regard to the disputed terms in JobDiva's '573, '715, '823, and '221 Patents, and James Allan, Ph.D., with regard to the disputed term in Monster's '497 Patent.
While Markman decisions are considered questions of law (as discussed below), see Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 979 (Fed. Cir. 1995), aff'd, 517 U.S. 370 (1996); Lighting Ballast Control LLC v. Philips Elecs. N. Am. Corp., 744 F.3d 1272, 1284 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (en banc), it is impossible to ignorethat when witnesses are examined and then cross-examined before the Court on their respective views as to how one of ordinary skill in the art at the time would understand the intrinsic evidence, the Court does and must assess the demeanor and weigh the credibility of those witnesses in determining which view to follow. The Court is not itself one of ordinary skill in the art in this or most cases. Accordingly, the Court cannot posit its own view.
Here, the parties' expert witnesses offered conflicting interpretations of terms based on their reading of intrinsic evidence from the perspective of one of ordinary skill in the art. The Court had to, and did, assess the strengths and weaknesses of those interpretations and, in doing so, weighed the evidence. There is no other way to describe this process—there are sometimes, and were here, plain factual aspects to claim construction. Thus, where indicated, the Court's determinations regarding the appropriate construction are mixed questions of law and fact.
The Court found a significant difference between the demeanor and credibility of Mitzenmacher and Carbonell. Mitzenmacher was argumentative and at times evasive. The Court was not left with the impression that his views were to be given great weight. In contrast, Carbonell was highly credible and informative. He was forthcoming and clear. The Court is entirely comfortable placing great weight on his views.4
The parties' experts regarding the '497 Patent, Polish and Allan, both seemed credible, though Allan provided significantly more detail than Polish did. As a result, the Court bases its determinations on the weight it gives to the support Polish and Allan presented in their declarations and at the live evidentiary hearing, as well as on the additional evidence in the record with regard to the disputed term in the '497 Patent.
Set forth below are the Court's determinations regarding each of the terms as to which construction has been sought.
JobDiva's '573, '823, and '715 Patents share a common specification (the "'573 Specification" or the "Specification"). The '823 and '715 Patents are divisional patents from the application underlying the '573 Patent. The '221 Patent issued from a continuation-in-part application that has substantial overlap with the specification shared by JobDiva's other Patents here at issue.
Resume searching has been in existence for as long as employers have been receiving and reviewing multiple resumes for employment positions. Manual search was the initial method. With the advent of computers, electronic systems were able to improve upon the manual process, resulting in increased speed and improved accuracy.
There were, however, certain limitations in prior electronic systems— limitations which both Monster and JobDiva sought to address in their patents. JobDiva's '573 Patent describes the invention as a computer system and method for managing access to a resume database.
The '573 Specification describes certain limitations of prior resume-searching systems, including text-based searching, which did not account for alternative terminology or the length and duration of experience. As a result, the prior systems retrieved a large number of what the Specification refers to as "irrelevant resumes." (Compl. Ex. A, Col. 2, line 4.) (Id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 9-13.) To address this issue, certain systems required candidates "to input the duration of experience that they have in a skill or experience-related phrase." (Id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 17-18.) The Specification describes three principal disadvantages of these systems: they prolonged the set-up process (id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 28-38), they were not dynamic (id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 39-47), and they utilized the processor-intensive operation of tallying the duration of experience for a skill or experience-related phrase at search time (id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 48-56).
JobDiva's invention was designed to provide tools to reduce the number of resumes returned from searches "by identifying a set of candidates who can possibly satisfy the qualifications and requirements sought by a hiring manager." (Id. Ex. A, Col. 2, lines 60-62.) The invention seeks to provide a method of identifying "mostresumes that can possibly include the sought after qualification or requirement" (id. Ex. A, Cols. 2-3, lines 66-1) and "avoid identifying resumes that cannot possibly include the sought after qualification or requirement" (id. Ex. A, Col. 3, lines 1-2).
The system or method involves receiving a resume that includes at least one skill or experience-related phrase; storing the resume in a resume database; parsing the resume into searchable segments; computing a term of experience for each skill or experience-related phrase; and storing a parsed resume in the resume database (which involves, inter alia, converting the natural-language resume into XML format). (Id. Ex. A, Col. 3, lines 11-17, 35-39.) Because resumes typically contain date ranges on a job-by-job basis, and each job typically requires employees to practice more than one skill, a...
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