Rembrandt Patent Innovations, LLC v. Apple, Inc.
| Decision Date | 22 November 2017 |
| Docket Number | 2016-2324 |
| Parties | REMBRANDT PATENT INNOVATIONS, LLC, REMBRANDT SECURE COMPUTING, LP, Plaintiffs-Appellants v. APPLE, INC., Defendant-Appellee |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit |
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Nos. 3:14-cv-05093-WHA, 3:14-cv-05094-WHA, Judge William H. Alsup.
J. MICHAEL JAKES, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiffs-appellants. Also represented by EDWARD ROBERT YOCHES; JACOB ADAM SCHROEDER, Palo Alto, CA.
MARK S. DAVIES, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by MELANIE L. BOSTWICK, KATHERINE M. KOPP, AMISHA R. PATEL; CHRISTOPHER JAMES GASPAR, ANDREW LICHTENBERG, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, New York, NY; MARK C. SCARSI, Los Angeles, CA.
Before PROST, Chief Judge, CHEN, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs (collectively, Rembrandt) sued Apple, Inc. (Apple) for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,185,678 (the '678 patent). The district court construed certain terms in the '678 patent's claims and granted Apple's motion for summary judgment of noninfringement. Rembrandt appeals the district court's claim construction and noninfringement rulings. We affirm.
The '678 patent describes techniques for securely initializing, or "bootstrapping," a computer system. '678 patent col. 1 ll. 23-25. The asserted claims recite systems and methods for verifying the integrity of a computer's boot components and recovering at least one boot component that is found to be corrupted. Verification involves a "chain of integrity checks," executed by certain hardware and a computer's Basic Input Output System (BIOS), to determine whether boot components have been corrupted. Id. col. 6 ll. 6-24. Recovery involves the replacement of any corrupted boot components. Apple's noninfringement arguments hinge on whether the claimed recovery step must be performed automatically without human intervention, as Apple argues, or whether there is no such requirement, as Rembrandt argues.
Figure 2a depicts the functional steps and components used in a preferred embodiment of the claimed invention:
Image materials not available for display.
FIG. 2a In Figure 2a, verification begins when a computer is powered on and executes a "Power on Self Test" (POST) at functional layer 200, which tests the computer's processor and initiates other tests controlled by the BIOS. Id. col. 7 l. 61 - col. 8 l. 11. Components at layer 200 are "assumed to be valid." Id. col. 8 ll. 48-49. Control is subsequently passed from one functional layer to the next, but only after each layer cryptographically verifies the integrity of components in the next layer. Once initialized, each layer adds correspondingly higher levels of capability to the system. Verification of all boot layers ensures the system's integrity before control is passed to the computer's operating system.
Recovery takes place only if verification detects an integrity failure. "Once an integrity failure is detected, the invention uses a secure protocol to inform a trusted repository that a failure has occurred and to obtain a valid replacement component." Id. col. 4 ll. 49-51. As depicted in Figure 2a, the claimed "trusted repository" may be implemented via the "AEGIS ROM" component for "secure recovery of any integrity failures found during the initial bootstrap." Id. col. 10 ll. 47-67.
The specification describes the '678 patent's invention as "relat[ing] to an architecture for initializing a computer system and more particularly to a secure bootstrap process and automated recovery procedure." '678 patent col. 1 ll. 23-25. According to the specification, the invention achieves a reduction in the total cost of owning a personal computer by "automatically detecting and repairing integrity failures," without requiring a user to call technical support staff or suffer any machine downtime. Id. col. 4 ll. 60-65.
Rembrandt asserted claims 1, 3, 4, and 7 of the '678 patent. Independent claim 1 recites:
Id. col. 21 l. 39 - col. 22 l. 11.
Claim 3 depends from claim 1 and recites:
An architecture for initializing a computer system according to claim 1, wherein said trusted repository is a host computer communicating with said computer system through a communications interface coupled to said expansion bus.
Id. col. 22 ll. 15-19.
Independent claim 4 recites:
Id. col. 22 ll. 20-26.
Claim 7 depends from claim 4 and recites:
The method of claim 4, wherein step (4) employs a secure protocol to obtain a replacement boot component from a trusted repository to replace said failed boot component.
Id. col. 22 ll. 37-40.
Rembrandt accuses various models of Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices of infringing the asserted claims. Each of the accused products runs Apple's operating system for mobile devices, iOS. When products running iOS are powered on, their processors initiate a verification procedure that uses a chain of integrity checks, starting with the execution of software stored in a SecureROM component. Additional software components in the boot sequence include, in order of access: the LLB, iBoot, and iOS kernel. Each of the boot components, other than the iOS kernel, checks the integrity of the next boot component by comparing a measured cryptographic value of the next component with a value obtained from a stored digital signature. When iOS's boot process succeeds, each component in the boot chain is verified, and the iOS kernel loads the iOS operating system.
When the integrity of a boot component cannot be verified, the accused mobile devices enter one of two recovery modes: Device Firmware Update (DFU) Mode or Recovery Mode. The devices enter DFU Mode when SecureROM fails to verify the integrity of LLB or when LLB fails to verify the integrity of iBoot. The devices enter Recovery Mode when iBoot fails to verify the integrity of the iOS kernel. Upon entering a recovery mode, Apple's devices will display either a blank screen (in DFU Mode) or an image prompting users to restore their devices using Apple's iTunes software (in Recovery Mode).
In either recovery mode, Apple's customer support web pages and service guides instruct a user to connect the corrupted mobile device to a computer running iTunes. The corrupted device will be unusable unless the user connects it to a computer running iTunes and initiates the recovery process. When installed on a computer, iTunes generally launches itself automatically when it detects a connection to an iOS device that is in recovery mode. Once connected, iTunes displays a dialog box prompting the user to select "OK" or "Restore" to proceed with the recovery process. After a user opts to initiate recovery, iTunes contacts a remote Apple server, downloads replacement boot components, cryptographically verifies the replacement components' integrity, and installs the new components on the corrupted device to complete recovery.
Rembrandt filed suit in January 2014 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The case was later transferred to the Northern District of California. Apple moved for summary judgment of noninfringement in May 2016, contending that the asserted claims require automatic recovery and that Apple's mobile products "cannot recover without manual intervention." J.A. 1030. Rembrandt opposed, arguing that (1) the asserted claims do not require automatic recovery; and (2) even if the claims require automatic recovery, Apple's products still infringe, either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents.
The district court granted Apple's motion, holding that (1) the asserted claims, when read in light of the specification, require automatic recovery; and (2) Apple's devices do not infringe because they do not use automatic recovery. Although the asserted claims do not recite the word "automatic," the district court placed weight on, inter alia, the specification's characterization of the invention as "relat[ing] to . . . a secure bootstrap process and automated recovery procedure." J.A. 8 ) (emphasis added). The district court also noted the specification's disparagement of prior art recovery processes that require human interaction. It further observed that the specification repeatedly refers to automatic recovery processes as advantageously eliminating the need for phone calls to technical support staff and associated downtime. In addition, the district court found significant that "[t]here is not a single reference to recovery with human intervention" in the patent. J.A. 9.
In light of its claim construction opinion, the district court granted summary judgment of no literal infringement. The district court opined that, contrary to Rembrandt's arguments, "[a]utomatic recovery simply cannot mean recovery started manually, even if the technical restoration of a new component is ultimately...
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