Sony Electronics v. Soundview Technologies

• Decision Date: 25 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. 3:00CV754(JBA).,3:00CV754(JBA).
• Citation: 225 F.Supp.2d 164
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: SONY ELECTRONICS, INC., et al. v. SOUNDVIEW TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

225 F.Supp.2d 164

SONY ELECTRONICS, INC., et al. v. SOUNDVIEW TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

No. 3:00CV754(JBA).

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

September 25, 2002.

Gale R. Peterson, San Antonio, TX, pro se.

Jacqueline D. Bucar, S. Peter Sachner, Timothy P. Jensen, Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn, New Haven, CT, Richard L. DeLucia, Richard S. Gresalfi, Elizabeth A. Gardner, Thomas R. Makin, Kenyon & Kenyon, New York, NY, Gary M. Hoffman, Dickstein Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky, Washington, DC, Stephen P. Sachner, Hitt, Sachner & Miele, Cheshire, Richard M. Steuer, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, New York, NY, Jaime A. Siegel, Park Ridge, NJ, for Sony Electronics Inc.

Ruling on Motion for Summary Judgment of Non-Infringement [Doc. # 328]

ARTERTON, District Judge.

Pursuant to § 551 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,¹ the Federal Communications Commission has adopted regulations mandating that all 13-inch or larger television sets sold after January 1, 2000 be capable of blocking the display of violent or sexually explicit programming that may be objectionable to viewers. See generally 47 C.F.R. § 15.120 ("Program blocking technology requirements for television receivers"). Soundview Technologies, Inc. ("Soundview"), holds a patent (the '584 patent)² on a "video and audio blanking system" that allows television viewers to block programs carrying a certain rating. Plaintiffs are group of manufacturers and trade groups whose televisions contain a v-chip which complies with the FCC's standard. They have brought this action against Soundview for, inter alia, a declaration that their televisions' v-chips which contain program blocking technology do not infringe the '584 patent.

In the present motion for summary judgment, the moving parties, termed the Non-Soundview Parties,³ consist of five television manufacturers and two industry associations accused of inducing infringement. They assert that under a proper construction of Soundview's '584 patent, there is no material dispute of fact and the Non-Soundview Parties are entitled to judgment of non-infringement as a matter of law. Specifically, the Non-Soundview Parties contend that the '584 patent is only infringed by devices containing "separate rating signal lines," which their televisions do not have. In opposition, Soundview advances a different construction of the term "separate rating signal lines" under which it claims infringement by the televisions, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, requiring trial disposition.⁴

For the reasons set out below, the Court concludes that under the proper construction of the '584 patent, no genuine issue of material fact remains in order to determine whether the v-chip televisions infringe the '584 patent, and that summary judgment of non-infringement is appropriate.

I. The '584 Patent and the V-Chip Televisions

A. The '584 Patent

The '584 patent is comprised of 31 claims, the first of which is independent, while the remainder are dependant.⁵ It is the construction of the first claim which is at issue in this motion:

We claim:

1. A television editing system activated by transmitting digital codes for blanking at least part of the output of a receiver, in which the receiver includes at least a portion of a captioning circuit means for detecting digital data if present in the transmitted signal and supplying the data to a data bus;

wherein said editing system comprises an auxiliary circuit which includes a character detector, rating select switch means, and blanking logic means;

the character detector having inputs coupled to said data bus, means for decoding predetermined digital codes of a special set of characters, and output to rating signal lines, there being a separate rating signal line for each character of said special set;

the rating select switch means having settings for different ratings; and

the blanking logic means having logic circuits coupled to the rating signal lines and to the rating select switch means to compare the switch setting to signals on the rating signal lines, and in response to the comparison to generate a logic output signal condition for selectively either blanking or not blanking at least part of the receiver output.

'584 patent, Claim 1.

This claim describes an auxiliary circuit with three elements: (1) a "character detector," (2) a "rating select switch means," and (3) a "blanking logic means." The "rating selector switch means" is the device that parents, for example, would use to select what kind of programming they will allow their children to watch. The "character detector" picks up the broadcaster's pre-embedded "digital codes of a special set of characters," which are the codes that describe the content of the program and are transmitted in the closed captioning signals transmitted with television programming. Finally, the "blanking logic means" compares the rating embedded in the broadcaster's signal to the user's expressed preference to determine whether the particular program should be displayed or blocked. In the system pictured in the drawings and described in the Detailed Description of the Drawings, there were three possible program content ratings (G, PG, and R), and each rating could be correlated with either the video or audio portions of a television program, yielding six rating codes: Gv, PGv, Rv, Ga, PGa, and Ra.

For the purposes of this motion, the central element of importance is the description of the character detector in Claim 1, and in particular its requirement that the character detector have separate rating signal lines. Included in the patent is a drawing of the character detector, Figure 2A (which is then described in the "Detailed Description of the Drawing"):

Claim 1 of the patent describes the character detector as "having inputs coupled to said data bus" [the data bus is Object 54 in Figure 2A, see Col. 3 lines 44-46], means for decoding

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predetermined digital codes of a special set of characters, and output to rating signal lines, there being a separate rating signal line for each character of said special set." Col. 9, lines 37-40 (emphasis added). In Figure 2A, these "separate rating signal lines" are the six lines that intersect with cable 56 on the far right of the diagram, as they are clearly labeled "Gv," "PGv," "Rv," "Ga," "PGa," and "Ra," and in the "Detailed Description of the Drawing," the following explanation is given:

Gv is the video "G" rating signal line.

PGv is the video "PG" rating signal line.

Rv is the video "R" rating signal line.

Ga is the audio "G" rating signal line.

PGa is the audio "PG" rating signal line.

Ra is the audio "R" rating signal line.

Col. 6, lines 3-8. These same lines appear in Figures 2B (the lamp interface circuit), 2C (the audio and video blanking logic), and 2D (an alternate configuration of the audio and video blanking logic), each time represented by a discrete line that is labeled with one of three ratings (G, PG or R) and a designation of either audio ("a") or video ("v").

In Figure 2B, the lines are labeled vertically on the far left of the figure and travel across the entire figure. In Figure 2C, they are labeled in the upper left corner of the figure, as they are in Figure 2D, the alternate configuration of the audio and video blanking logic.

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B. The V-Chip Televisions and the Industry-Wide Ratings

Under the applicable FCC regulation (47 C.F.R. § 15.120), the televisions must comply with industry standard EIA-744-A, "Transport of Content Advisory Information Using Extended Data Service (XDS)," and EIA-608, "Recommended Practice for Line 21 Data Service," both published by the Electronics Industries Association. 47 C.F.R. § 15.120(d)(1).⁶ EIA-744-A requires television receivers to be capable of recognizing and blocking 54 separate ratings: both the MPAA rating system (N/A, G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17, X and NOT RATED), the TV Parental Guidance System age-only ratings (NONE, TV-Y, TV-Y7, TV-G, TV-PG, TV14 and TV-MA), as well as the TV Parental Guidance System content-based ratings (which uses the age ratings plus most combinations of the indicators FV, V, S, L and D).⁷ EIA-744-A also requires that any given program be assigned only one of the 54 possible ratings. See EIA-744-A at 6 ("[t]he data within this packet shall not change during the course of a program").

The televisions alleged to infringe the '584 patent each have a parental control feature that complies with EIA-744-A. See Shintani Decl. ¶ 7 (Sony televisions); Mishima Decl. ¶ 7 (Mitsubishi televisions); Hoshino Decl. ¶ 4 (Sharp televisions); Johnson Decl. ¶ 4 (Toshiba televisions). The televisions "extract ratings from a received television signal and compare these ratings to the user-selected ratings[, blocking programs when] the received rating corresponds to a rating intended to be blocked (as selected by the user)." Shintani Decl. ¶ 9; accord Mishima Decl. ¶ 7; Johnson Decl. ¶ 8; see also Hoshino Decl. ¶ 3 (stating that Sharp's televisions "include a parental control functionality in accordance with FCC requirements").

Both sides agree that the Non-Soundview parties' televisions perform the blocking function by using processors with either 8- or 16-bit multifunctional internal data buses. Soundview's Local R. 9(c) Statement ¶¶ 30-31 (agreeing to this description); see also Shintani Decl. ¶ 14; Mishima Decl. ¶ 11; Hoshino Decl. ¶ 8; Johnson Decl. ¶ 11. The processors are multifunctional in the sense that they "are also used to transfer closed captioning data, on-screen display, and picture-related data (e.g., contrast, brightness, color) within the microcomputer." Shintani Decl. ¶ 14. "Thus, it is not possible to determine solely from the high ("1") or low ("0") bit pattern of a data bus whether the data relates to...