Wavetronix v. Eis Electronic Integrated Sys.
| Decision Date | 29 July 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 2008-1160.,No. 2008-1129.,2008-1129.,2008-1160. |
| Citation | 573 F.3d 1343 |
| Parties | WAVETRONIX, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. EIS ELECTRONIC INTEGRATED SYSTEMS, Defendant-Cross Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit |
Brent P. Lorimer, Workman Nydegger, of Salt Lake City, UT, argued appellant. With him on the brief were Thomas R. Vuksinick and David R. Todd. were Chad E. Nydegger and L. David Griffin.
Richard D. Rochford, Nixon Peabody LLP, of Rochester, NY, defendant-cross appellant. Of counsel on the brief were Michael F. Orman and Harris.
Before NEWMAN and SCHALL, Circuit Judges, and PATEL, District Judge.*
Wavetronix LLC ("Wavetronix") brought this patent infringement action against EIS Electronic Integrated Systems ("EIS"). The patent in suit is United States Patent No. 6,556,916 ("the '916 patent"), entitled "System and Method for Identification of Traffic Lane Positions." Wavetronix and EIS both develop systems for monitoring the flow of automobile traffic on thoroughfares. Wavetronix accuses the automatic setup feature of EIS's Remote Traffic Microwave Sensor ("RTMS") X3 monitoring device of infringing one independent claim and several dependent claims of the '916 patent, literally or under the doctrine of equivalents.
The district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement to EIS. Wavetronix appeals the judgment of non-infringement, and EIS cross-appeals dismissal of its counterclaims of invalidity and unenforceability. We conclude that summary judgment of non-infringement is proper, and we affirm the district court's judgment.1
Urban planners require accurate counts of vehicular traffic in order to plan the construction of new thoroughfares as well as to determine the optimal ways to use existing thoroughfares. It is often useful to know how much traffic travels in a particular lane, for instance a High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane, as compared to other lanes on the same thoroughfare. Numerous sensor devices using, for example, radar or acoustic signals have been developed to monitor the flow of vehicle traffic across several lanes of a road or highway. The '916 patent's Figure 5 illustrates a roadside sensor unit with a field of vision extending across several lanes of a street.
For these devices to accurately tally the number of vehicles traveling in each lane, they must "know" where the lane boundaries are located. While a human being can simply look at a highway and see where the lanes of traffic are located, a sensing device must be "taught" the location of the lanes before it can begin to serve its monitoring function. One way to achieve this is to allow the device to detect some number of vehicles driving on the road and to extrapolate the locations of the lanes from an examination of where the detected vehicles have actually tended to drive. The underlying assumption (which highway patrol officers may dispute) is that drivers will more often than not drive near the centers of lanes, rather than near or over lane boundaries. If this assumption holds, then detecting where some number of vehicles have actually been driven can assist in identifying the centers of lanes; likewise, the places on the road on which automobiles have tended not to drive can be identified as lane boundaries. The patent in suit is directed to a method of performing the initial step of "teaching" a monitoring device the location of the traffic lanes on a given thoroughfare using detection and observation of actual automobile traffic.
In 2000, Wavetronix undertook the development of a new radar-based traffic monitoring system. Many of the prior art systems required manual adjustment to define the locations of the traffic lanes on the highway to be monitored. Wavetronix sought to improve the capability for automated lane definition. On September 27, 2001, three inventors filed the application for what became the '916 patent, naming Wavetronix as the assignee. The patent issued on April 29, 2003. Only claim 1 is at issue on appeal.2 That claim reads, in its entirety:
1. In a traffic monitoring system having a sensor, a method for defining traffic lanes, comprising the steps of:
a. for a selectable plurality of vehicles,
i. detecting each of said selectable plurality of vehicles present within a field of view of said sensor;
ii. estimating a position of said each of said selectable plurality of vehicles;
iii. recording said position of said each of said selectable plurality of vehicles;
b. generating a probability density function estimation from each of said position of said each of said selectable plurality of vehicles; and
c. defining said traffic lanes within said traffic monitoring system from said probability density function estimation.
The specification discloses several preferred embodiments, all of which are described through the use of histograms. Each of these histograms displays, in some form, a two-dimensional grid with peaks and valleys representing the relative heaviness of vehicle traffic across a set of "range bins" representing spatial distances from the sensor. These histograms, which are Figures 6, 7 and 8 in the patent, are shown below.
The specification teaches that these histograms exemplify the kind of "probability density function estimation" recited in steps (b) and (c) of claim 1, and that the "peaks of the PDF represent the center of each lane and the low spots (or valleys) of the PDF represent the lane boundaries (or regions where cars don't drive)." '916 patent col.6 ll.15-18. The specification also explains that statistical techniques are used to identify the boundaries between lanes, and that these boundaries are then used to define the lanes for the purpose of detecting where vehicles drive. See id. col.7 l.51-col.9 l.6.
As do prior art systems, EIS's RTMS X3 detects and counts vehicles in several lanes of a thoroughfare over an extended period of time. The initial determination of lane locations may occur manually or may be assisted by the auto set-up feature of a program called the "Setup Wizard." It is this auto set-up feature of the RTMS X3's Setup Wizard that Wavetronix accuses of infringement. While the parties emphasize different aspects of the system, there is no material dispute of fact as to how the accused system operates.
The RTMS X3 sensor unit, or transceiver, has a field of view that extends across a given roadway. The field of view is divided into thirty-two "range slices," each having a width of about three meters, i.e., the approximate width of a normal traffic lane. The transceiver is attached to a pole alongside the road, and a human installer connects the transceiver to a laptop computer. The transceiver detects passing automobiles, and a graphic on the computer screen displays small images to represent them. The system cannot accurately assign any particular automobile to a lane until range slices are matched up with actual lanes in the transceiver's field of vision. The human installer may define lanes manually by aligning the lane boundaries on the computer's screen with the spaces between blips displayed on the laptop that represent passing automobiles. Alternatively, the installer may choose to use the Setup Wizard's auto setup feature. If this feature is chosen, the installer tells the RTMS X3 how many lanes to expect. The RTMS X3 then monitors and records automotive traffic for one minute.3
During that one minute, the transceiver continuously transmits radar signals toward the roadway and detects the reflected signals, while the Setup Wizard processes the data so generated in several steps. First, every ten milliseconds the system generates a series of thirty-two numbers corresponding to the strength of the reflected radar signal in each of the thirty-two range slices. A processor independently compares each of the thirty-two values to a particular "detection threshold." The results of this comparison are stored in a thirty-two position array, i.e., a sequence of thirty-two locations in the transceiver's memory called the "Q-vector." The Q-vector stores, for each range slice, the difference between its reflected radar strength and the detection threshold. Only if an automobile has driven in a particular range slice within the preceding ten milliseconds will the Q-vector contain a positive value corresponding to the position of that range slice. The values in the Q-vector are replaced every ten milliseconds as new signal measurements are taken by the sensor. During the one-minute set-up process, the contents of the Q-vector array are continuously sent to the laptop, where they are replicated in an array called the "REQ array." The REQ array processes only about twenty percent of the Q-vector data that is generated, because the transceiver generates data faster than it can be transmitted to the laptop.
As data is sent to the laptop's REQ array, the Setup Wizard software identifies "local maxima" for each ten-millisecond increment of time. A local maximum is identified when the value at a particular position in the thirty-two position REQ array is greater than the values at the positions to the immediate left or right. After identifying all of the local maxima present in the REQ array during a given ten-millisecond interval, the Setup Wizard software ignores everything except the "first" local maximum, which is the local maximum nearest to the sensor. The various stages of processing so far described result in the production of one "first local maximum" corresponding to one of the thirty-two range bins every ten milliseconds.
The next step involves an array called the "NAMP...
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