Tech. Patents Llc v. Deutsche Telekom Ag

• Decision Date: 25 August 2010
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. AW–07–3012.
• Citation: 774 F.Supp.2d 732,2010 Markman 3385397
• Parties: TECHNOLOGY PATENTS LLC, Plaintiff,v.DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AG, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

774 F.Supp.2d 732

2010 Markman 3385397

TECHNOLOGY PATENTS LLC, Plaintiff,

v.DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AG, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. AW–07–3012.

United States District Court, D. Maryland, Southern Division.

Aug. 25, 2010.

39,870. Construed and Ruled Valid by.

Edward T. Colbert, Kenyon and Kenyon LLP, Barry J. Reingold, John K. Roche, Perkins Coie LLP, Washington, DC, Elizabeth S. Tse, Stuart J. Sinder, Kenyon and Kenyon LLP, New York, NY, Kaustuv M. Das, Ramsey M. Al-Salam, Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, WA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ALEXANDER WILLIAMS, JR., District Judge.

Pending before the Court is the parties' Joint Claim Construction Statement (Doc. No. 1278). Plaintiff Technology Patents LLC (“Technology Patents”) filed this action against 131 domestic and international telecommunications companies, alleging infringement of the claim of Plaintiff's U.S. Patent No. RE39,870 (“the '870 Patent”) and U.S. Patent No. 6,646,542 (“the '542 Patent”). Defendants AT & T Mobility LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo! Inc., Sprint Nextel Corporation, Motorola, Inc., Palm, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., Samsung Telecommunications America LLP, LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc., Helio, LLC, Clickatell (PTY) LTD., Cellco Partnership, and T–Mobile USA, Inc. remain. Plaintiff claims that Defendants infringed thirty-four claims of the '870 Patent—Claims 4 through 37, and Claim 39. The parties request that the Court construe seventy-three terms from these claims, and have fully briefed the related issues.¹ (Doc. No. 1278.) Also pending before the Court are Plaintiff's Motion to Seal Certain Exhibits to Plaintiff's Opening Brief on Claim Construction (Doc. No. 1293), Plaintiff's Motion to Strike Defendants' Post–Hearing Filings on Claim Construction, or in the Alternative Request for Leave to File a Response (Doc. No. 1387), as well as five motions for summary judgment with related motions to seal, and a Motion for Reconsideration (Doc. No. 1401). The Court will address all motions related to claim construction (Doc. Nos. 1278, 1293 & 1387) in this Memorandum Opinion, and will address the other motions in a future opinion. On December 15, 2009, the Court conducted a hearing on claim construction. The Court has reviewed the entire record, as well as the Pleadings and Exhibits, with respect to claim construction.

BACKGROUND

On October 9, 2007, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reissued a patent for a “global paging system using packet-switched digital data network and remote country designation” to Technology Patents as the ' 870 Patent. The invention was for a “global paging system utilizing land-based packet-switched digital data network (e.g. the Internet) and a feature for permitting subscribers to remotely designate countries in which they are, or expect to be, located.” ² (' 870 Patent, Ex. A to Pl.'s Open Br. Claim Constr. [hereinafter Pl.'s Open. Br.] at 1:19–24.) The ' 870 Patent provides that it was designed to satisfy a need for a “more efficient global paging system.” ( Id. at 2: 33–35.) At the time the system in the ' 870 Patent was designed, three other types of global paging systems existed—1) geographic-area selective satellite-based paging system and corresponding method, 2) systems for providing communications based on geographic location, and 3) wide area paging systems. ( See id. at 1:32–34, 56–57, 63–66.) The ' 870 Patent asserts that these inventions did not fulfill the need for a cheap and efficient global paging system that allowed receiving users to “remotely input country designations in which they [were] to be paged.” ( Id. at 2:33–35.)

The '870 Patent solved this problem by claiming a system which allows for paging of the receiving user (“RU”) in countries where the RU “may be located,” as per a list input by the RU. ( See, e.g., id. at 10:14–20.) A general description of the system follows. The RU must set up a list of countries that “he or she wishes to be reachable in by way of the paging system,” and these are the only countries where the RU can be paged. ( Id. at 6:22–24.) When traveling, the RU may designate the country where he or she is located. ( Id. at 6:29–50.) To contact the RU, the originating user (“OU”) contacts the “paging gateway” through the public-switched telephone network (“PSTN”) or email and inputs the RU's “pager ID” along with a “paging message.” ( Id. at 3:54–57.) The system then checks for the RU's country designation, and pages the RU in that country, if access is possible. ( Id. at 5:23–30.) If the RU's pager cannot be accessed in the designated area, or if the RU has not designated a country, the originating server retrieves the previously input country list, attempts to page the RU at the first country on the list, and if unsuccessful, proceeds to attempt to page the RU at the second country on the list, and if unsuccessful, continues through the list, a certain number of times. ( Id. at 5:53–60, Col. 8:13–20) Once the system reaches the RU, a website or server transmits the message through a land-based digital data network (e.g. the Internet) to the RU's device. ( Id. at 5:53–64.)

On November 8, 2007, Plaintiff brought suit against 131 domestic and foreign companies in the cellular phone industry claiming infringement of the '870 Patent and the '542 Patent. The Court dismissed the 118 foreign Defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction and Plaintiff dropped its allegations regarding the '542 Patent. Remaining are Plaintiff's accusations of infringement of Claims 4 through 37 and Claim 39 of the '870 Patent. The parties have submitted seventy-three terms in the '870 Patent for claim construction and have agreed to divide the terms into fourteen groupings (Doc. No. 1385), which the Court will use to facilitate claim construction.³ Where the parties were unable to agree on the title for a term grouping, the Court selected a title. When possible, the Court has defined a single example term as a proxy for the definitions of all of the individual terms in the grouping. Each individual term is defined in the Table of Construed Terms following this Memorandum Opinion.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

Claim construction is decided by the Court as a matter of law. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 970–71 (Fed.Cir.1995) (en banc), aff'd 517 U.S. 370, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d 577 (1996). “The duty of the trial judge is to determine the meaning of the claims at issue, and to instruct the jury accordingly.” Exxon Chem. Patents, Inc. v. Lubrizol Corp., 64 F.3d 1553, 1555 (Fed.Cir.1995) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 518 U.S. 1020, 116 S.Ct. 2554, 135 L.Ed.2d 1073 (1996). In order to determine the meaning of a claim term, the Court should first look to the plain language of the claim and presume it carries its “ordinary and customary meaning.” Teleflex, Inc. v. Ficosa N. Am. Corp., 299 F.3d 1313, 1324 (Fed.Cir.2002); Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed.Cir.1996). The ordinary and customary meaning is defined as the meaning of the claim term to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the date the patent application in question was filed. See Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed.Cir.2005) (en banc).

In order to ascertain the ordinary and customary meaning of a disputed claim term, the claims themselves must be thoroughly examined. If a claim term is used more than once throughout the patent, the “usage of a term in one claim can often illuminate the meaning of the same term in other claims.” Markman, 52 F.3d at 978. “Differences among the claims can also be a useful guide in understanding the meaning of particular claim terms.” Id. Further, the language that introduces the body of a claim can offer insight into the claims' meaning. See Gillette Co. v. Energizer Holdings, Inc., 405 F.3d 1367, 1371 (Fed.Cir.2005). For example, “the word ‘comprising’ transitioning from the preamble to the body signals that the entire claim is presumptively open-ended.” See id. (citing Crystal Semiconductor Corp. v. TriTech Microelectronics Int'l, Inc., 246 F.3d 1336, 1347 (Fed.Cir.2001)). Also, “the presence of a dependent claim that adds a particular limitation gives rise to a presumption that the limitation in question is not present in the independent claim.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1315.

If a term's ordinary and customary meaning cannot be determined from the plain language of the claim alone, it is proper for the Court to look to the Patent's specification to determine the “true intent and meaning of the language in the claims.” Bates v. Coe, 98 U.S. 31, 38, 25 L.Ed. 68 (1878); see also Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1316. The specification, in conjunction with the prosecution history and the prior art cited during the patent prosecution serve as intrinsic evidence and can be used to ascertain the meaning of the disputed claim terms. Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1319–24. “The claims, of course, do not stand alone. Rather, they are part of ‘a fully integrated written instrument,’ consisting principally of a specification that concludes with the claims. For that reason, claims ‘must be read in view of the specification, of which they are a part.’ ” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1315 (quoting Markman, 52 F.3d at 978). Preferred embodiments in the specification reflect the inventor's desired use for his or her patent and thus can assist in the Court's determination of the claim's scope. Additionally, it is improper to read limitations from the specification into the claims unless the specification makes consistent and repeated statements leading to the “inescapable conclusion” that a limitation stated only in the specification should apply to the claimed invention. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1323.

Dictionaries, expert testimony, and documents or prior art not part of the prosecution history are considered extrinsic evidence and the Court may use them to determine the true meaning of a claim term, however, the Court will give...