Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-14-01732/USCOURTS-ca13-14-01732-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Compaq Computer Corp.
Appellee
Convolve, Inc.
Appellant
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Not party
Seagate Technology, Inc.
Not party
Seagate Technology, LLC
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

CONVOLVE, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant

THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 

TECHNOLOGY,

Plaintiff

v.

COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP.,

Defendant-Appellee

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY, INC.,

Defendant

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY, LLC,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2014-1732

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of New York in No. 1:00-CV-05141, 

Judge George B. Daniels.

______________________ 

Decided: February 10, 2016

______________________ 

 JOHN THOMAS MOEHRINGER, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York, NY, argued for plaintiffCase: 14-1732 Document: 70-2 Page: 1 Filed: 02/10/2016
2 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

appellant. Also represented by GREGORY A. MARKEL,

KEVIN J. MCNAMEE, ROBERT MACAULAY POLLARO. 

 CHRISTOPHER LANDGRAFF, Bartlit Beck Herman 

Palenchar & Scott LLP, Chicago, IL, argued for defendant-appellee Compaq Computer Corp. Also represented by 

MARK FERGUSON, CHRISTOPHER R. HAGALE. 

 CARTER GLASGOW PHILLIPS, Sidley Austin LLP, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee Seagate Technology, LLC. Also represented by ERIKA MALEY; ROBERT 

N. HOCHMAN, Chicago, IL; ERIC W. HAGEN, McDermott, 

Will & Emery LLP, Los Angeles, CA.

______________________ 

Before DYK, TARANTO, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

HUGHES, Circuit Judge. 

This case returns to us after a remand to the Southern District of New York. In the first appeal, we reversed 

the district court’s summary judgment ruling that no 

accused products met the patent’s “selected unwanted 

frequencies” limitation and remanded for further proceedings. On remand, the district court granted summary 

judgment on alternative grounds. Because we agree with 

the district court that Seagate’s disk drives do not possess 

a user interface, but conclude that the district court erred 

by importing limitations into the “command” steps and in 

granting summary judgment based on intervening rights, 

we again affirm-in-part, vacate-in-part, reverse-in-part, 

and remand for further proceedings.

I 

As we explained in the first appeal, the technology at 

issue relates to improvements in computer hard drives

described in U.S. Patent No. 6,314,473. Convolve, Inc. v. 

Compaq Comput. Corp., 527 F. App’x 910, 913 (Fed. Cir. 

2013) (Convolve I). Hard drives store data as magnetized 

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 3

spots on the surface of disks or “platters” inside the drive. 

These spots are arranged in concentric circles, called 

tracks, on the surface of the platters. The hard drive also 

contains an arm that “seeks” between different “tracks” to 

read or write information on those tracks. As relevant to 

this appeal, hard drives ordinarily employ two motors to 

read and write data: (1) a spindle motor that spins circular platters, “allowing the head to cover the platters’ area 

while traversing over a line or arc;” and (2) “the voice coil 

motor . . . that moves the arm across the spinning platters.” Id. The process of moving the arm across the 

platters, called “seeking,” generates vibrations in the arm

and the attached read/write head, which generates acoustic noise audible to the user. The specification describes 

the inverse relationship between the seek time and the 

acoustic noise: the shorter the seek time, the greater the 

vibration and the greater the acoustic noise. Although 

acoustic noise can be generated from both the spindle 

motor and the seek process, the ’473 patent focuses on 

methods and apparatuses for improving hard drives by 

reducing acoustic noise generated by the movement of the 

disk drive’s arm and read/write head, i.e., the seek process. The patent describes a technique to minimize the 

vibrations of the head as it moves over the rotating hard 

disk that requires a “user interface” to control the speed 

at which the seek arm operates such that a user could 

select a quiet mode, which may have a slower read/write 

time but generates less noise.

Claim 10 is representative, and is reproduced below. 

The words added during reexamination are italicized and 

the words deleted are in brackets:

Method for controlling operation of a data storage 

device, comprising:

providing a user interface for controlling 

one of a seek time of the data storage deCase: 14-1732 Document: 70-2 Page: 3 Filed: 02/10/2016
4 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

vice and [an] a seek acoustic noise level of 

the data storage device;

operating the user interface so as to alter 

settings of one of the seek time and the 

seek acoustic noise level of the data storage device in inverse relation; and

outputting commands to the data storage 

device causing the data storage device to 

alter seek trajectory shape by shaping input signals to the data storage device to 

reduce selected unwanted frequencies 

from a plurality of frequencies in accordance with the altered settings.

’473C1 patent col. 2 ll. 23–35 (reexamined claim 10). 

Convolve, Inc. (Convolve) filed suit against Seagate

Technology, LLC and Seagate Technology, Inc. (Seagate)

and Compaq Computer Corp. (Compaq) in July 2000, 

alleging, among other things, infringement of the ’473 

patent. See Convolve I, 527 F. App’x at 916. Seagate’s 

accused products are disk drives with an on-board controller that interfaces with a host computer. The controller 

uses an industry standard interface, either ATA or SCSI, 

and the parties group these together for purposes of this 

appeal. The ATA/SCSI interface accepts commands from 

the host computer processor to switch between a “quiet” 

and a “performance” mode, and translates those commands for the hard drive, instructing it to change seek 

speed according to the selected mode. Compaq’s accused 

products are computers that contain the F10 BIOS user 

interface in combination with a Seagate hard drive. The 

F10 BIOS is a graphical user interface that allows a user 

to select certain hardware settings, including the seek 

speed and acoustic noise of a Seagate hard drive, but does 

not itself issue commands that directly change the seek 

speed of the disk drives.

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 5

In March 2005, the district court issued a claim construction order, which served the basis for its 2011 order 

granting summary judgment. The district court held that 

no accused products met the patent’s “selected unwanted 

frequencies” limitation. We reversed, finding that issues 

of fact precluded summary judgment of no direct or indirect infringement. On remand, at the defendants’ request, the district court granted summary judgment on 

three grounds: (1) Seagate’s ATA and SCSI interfaces do 

not meet the “user interface” limitation because they 

merely facilitate “[d]evice-to-device communications 

involved in the subsequent execution of a user’s selected 

mode,” J.A. 36; (2) Compaq’s computers do not meet the 

“commands” limitation because the processor generating 

the user interface does not itself generate the claimed 

“commands,” J.A. 38–43; and, in the alternative, (3) 

“patent infringement liability is precluded by intervening 

rights arising from [a] December 2, 2008 substantive 

amendment to the asserted claims,” J.A. 43. Convolve 

appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(1).

II

This court reviews a district court’s decision concerning summary judgment under the law of the regional 

circuit. Grober v. Mako Prods., Inc., 686 F.3d 1335, 1344 

(Fed. Cir. 2012). The Second Circuit reviews the grant or 

denial of summary judgment de novo. Major League 

Baseball Props., Inc. v. Salvino, Inc., 542 F.3d 290, 309 

(2d Cir. 2008). “To prove literal infringement, the patentee must show that the accused device contains each and 

every limitation of the asserted claims.” Ericsson, Inc. v. 

D-Link Sys., Inc., 773 F.3d 1201, 1215 (Fed. Cir. 2014). 

When determining whether a patent is infringed, the 

court must first “‘determine[ ] the scope and meaning of 

the patent claims asserted,’ and then compare[ ] the 

claims ‘to the allegedly infringing devices.’” Grober, 686 

F.3d at 1344 (quoting Cybor Corp. v. FAS Techs., Inc., 138 

Case: 14-1732 Document: 70-2 Page: 5 Filed: 02/10/2016
6 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

F.3d 1448, 1454 (Fed. Cir. 1998)). To the extent review of 

the district court’s claim construction is necessary, we 

review the ultimate determination as to claim meaning de 

novo, while giving deference to the district court’s factual 

findings as to the claim scope. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. 

Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 831, 836–38 (2015).

A 

The district court did not err in granting summary 

judgment of no direct infringement to Seagate because 

Seagate’s ATA/SCSI disk drives do not meet the “user 

interface” limitation present in the asserted claims. 

In its 2005 Markman order, the district court construed “user interface” as “software, hardware, firmware, 

or a combination thereof that allows a person, directly or 

indirectly, to alter parameters.” J.A. 96. In construing 

the term, the court determined that a “user interface” is 

not limited to a graphical user interface or mechanical 

switches, which were both disclosed in the specification. 

The court rejected a broader construction that would have 

stated that the “user interface” “may be accessed via other 

software or hardware, e.g., as a jumper, protocol, software 

program, keyboard or mouse.” See J.A. 31 n.11. In rejecting that construction, the district court explained that 

such an interpretation “fails to give meaning to the adjective ‘user,’ which distinguishes the interface from other 

types of interfaces used in the computing field,” such as 

“an advanced programming interface (API) which allows 

one software program to ‘interface’ with another.” 

J.A. 81. For the district court, “[t]he plain meaning of 

‘user interface’ requires a user . . . .” Id. By including the 

word “indirectly,” the district court intended to avoid 

“pedantic arguments” that a graphical user interface is 

not a “user interface” because the user must “position[ ] 

the cursor on the screen using a mouse,” such that the 

“user is interfacing with the mouse, and the mouse is 

interfacing with the computer.” J.A. 81.

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 7

Convolve takes issue with how the district court applied its construction in the summary judgment proceeding. In the summary judgment order, the district court 

stayed true to its construction, and rejected Convolve’s 

attempt to “expand the ‘user’ aspect of the term to the 

point of obsolescence.” J.A. 34. The court explained “[t]he 

proper interpretation of this Court’s ‘user interface’ construction limits the application of ‘indirectly’ to the manner in which a user alters disk drive parameters by 

communicating a command to the computer (through 

some combination of software, hardware, and firmware), 

and the manner in which the user’s command—once 

received by the user interface—is executed.” J.A. 35. In 

other words, “‘indirectly’ preserves nothing more than the 

true relationship between the user and his actual act of 

selection.” J.A. 36. 

We find that both the district court’s construction of 

the term “user interface” and its application of that construction were proper. The language of the claims supports the district court’s construction of “user interface” as 

“the site at which a user actually selects an operating 

mode.” J.A. 36. The claim term is “user interface,” not 

just “interface.” The word “user” therefore must distinguish between different kinds of interfaces. In the 

claimed method, the only action that a user takes is 

selecting an operating mode. The “user interface” is thus 

the interface that the user interacts with to select an 

operating mode—not subsequent interfaces or components that merely execute the user’s selection. As the 

district court found, a construction of “user interface” that 

includes a subsequent device-to-device interface involved 

in the execution of a mode selection “effectively reads the 

term ‘user’ out of the claim language.” J.A. 32. 

The specification confirms this reading. The specification discloses several embodiments of a “user interface,” 

all of which the user interacts with directly to select an 

operation mode. The specification discloses five graphical 

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8 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

user interfaces, shown in the figures as computer screen 

images with arrows or a sliding bar that a person manipulates with a mouse to select seek speed. It also describes 

a mechanical switch on the hard drive itself that a user 

physically pushes to change the operation mode. Although the claims are not limited to these particular 

embodiments, the nature of these embodiments confirms 

that a “user interface” must be the site at which the user 

actually selects an operation mode. 

Convolve argues that the prosecution history shows 

that it specifically broadened the asserted claims to 

include Seagate’s hard drives. According to the file history, the original claims recited a “graphical user interface” 

or a “controller,” and Convolve amended this term to read 

“user interface.” J.A. 1930–42. While these amendments 

may be broadening in some sense (including not just 

graphical user interfaces but mechanical interfaces, and 

not just controllers but software interfaces), they do not 

necessarily include the on-board interfaces on Seagate’s 

hard drives. The only evidence that these amendments 

were meant to encompass Seagate’s product is a declaration by one of the inventors submitted in this litigation. 

J.A. 1096, ¶ 96. This post-hoc explanation is not enough 

to overcome the language of the claims and the disclosures in the specification. 

Moreover, the district court’s clarified construction is 

consistent with its reasoning in the 2005 Markman order. 

The district court could not have intended “indirectly” to 

bring post-selection interfaces within the scope of “user 

interface.” Under this reading, the term “user interface” 

would include an interface that facilitates purely deviceto-device communication—such as the ATA/SCSI interface on Seagate’s hard drives. But the district court 

specifically excluded device-to-device interfaces when it 

declined to adopt Convolve’s proposed construction of 

“user” as “a person or device that uses the user interface.” 

J.A. 81.

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 9

Turning to the application of the district court’s construction to the facts of this case, we are not persuaded 

that the district court erred in finding that Convolve 

failed to raise an issue of material fact. ATA and SCSI 

are both device-to-device interfaces that connect the disk 

drive with the host computer processor. See, e.g., 

J.A. 2176 ¶ 25; J.A. 4686 (ATA and SCSI are interfaces 

“between host system and storage devices”). Indeed, 

Convolve’s expert conceded that he could not change a 

Seagate disk drive’s mode without “install[ing] it in a 

computer” and using “some other tool that would facilitate

[him] or facilitate [his] communication with the drive to 

alter settings.” J.A. 4181–82; J.A. 2176 ¶ 29. While it is 

true that the user can interact through a series of intermediaries, that is not the “pedantic-type” argument ruled 

out by the district court’s original claim construction. 

Convolve’s arguments on appeal collapse into a challenge 

of the district court’s claim construction, and fail to identify an error in the court’s application of its correct construction to the facts of the case.1

Lastly, our decision in Convolve I does not preclude 

the district court’s construction of “user interface.” As an 

initial matter, Convolve waived this argument by not 

raising it below. See Golden Bridge Tech., Inc. v. Nokia, 

Inc., 527 F.3d 1318, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2008). To the extent

that the argument was implicitly raised below, we interpret our own mandate de novo, Retractable Tech., Inc. v. 

Becton Dickinson & Co., 757 F.3d 1366, 1369 (Fed. Cir 

2014), and conclude that the prior mandate does not 

control the claim construction at issue here. In Convolve 

I, this court vacated summary judgment of non-

 

1 A jury determination in a parallel proceeding in 

the Eastern District of Texas applying a different claim 

construction does not compel a different result. Cf. J.A. 

5051–52; J.A. 5063–65.

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10 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

infringement under an inducement theory, because contrary to the district court’s conclusion, the panel found

some evidence that Compaq and Seagate’s customers 

operated their products in an infringing manner. Specifically, there was evidence that Compaq and Seagate 

provided “specific tools, with attendant instructions, on 

how to use the drives in an infringing way.” Convolve I, 

527 F. App’x at 929. Convolve argues that the panel 

essentially held that Seagate’s devices could meet the 

“user interface” limitation by finding they could directly 

infringe. But the panel did not address this precise 

question. Moreover, it construed only one claim term, and 

specified that “[n]o other claim construction is relevant to 

the district court’s ruling on the claims of the ’473 patent.” 

Id. at 926. This court’s opinion in Convolve I is not controlling of the claim construction and summary judgment 

issues here. 

B 

The district court erred by granting summary judgment that Compaq’s F10 BIOS interface does not meet 

the “commands” limitation of the asserted claim. In its 

summary judgment ruling, the district court treated all 

asserted claims as having the same scope, and concluded 

that the recited “commands” must be “shaped when 

issued from the processor in order to satisfy the claim 

limitation[s],” J.A. 42, and therefore Compaq’s F10 BIOS 

interface cannot infringe because it itself does not issue 

shaped commands. Implicit in this ruling is a claim 

interpretation that requires a singular processor associated with the user interface that issues commands, and 

excludes the existence of a second processor capable of 

issuing those commands, such as one integrated into the 

data storage device. This overlooks the differences among

the asserted claims.

The parties agree that the accused Compaq F10 BIOS 

interface issues generic commands, not “shaped comCase: 14-1732 Document: 70-2 Page: 10 Filed: 02/10/2016
CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 11

mands” as required by the claims. Neither party contested, at the district court or on appeal, the district court’s 

2005 construction of “data storage device” as including a 

device that “receives shaped commands from processor 

which may be integrated into the drive.” J.A. 85. Likewise, neither party contests the district court’s construction of the term “outputting commands to the data storage 

device” to encompass a situation where the command 

originates from the device itself. J.A. 86. Consistent with 

the specification’s disclosure of an embodiment where the 

actuator seeks “in accordance with control signals received from processor 73,” which may be a “‘separate 

controller’ dedicated to the disk drive,” ’473 patent col. 10 

ll. 6–14, these constructions together cover a disk drive 

that receives the required “shaped commands” from an 

on-board interface, rather than a separate computer 

processor. 

Turning to the specifics of the claims, we look to three 

groups. Claims 7, 8, and 10–14 do not plainly require the 

“user interface” to perform the “outputting commands” 

function. These claims require three core steps: “providing” a user interface, “operating” the user interface, and 

“outputting commands.” See, e.g., ’473C1 patent col. 2 ll.

23–35 (reexamined claim 10). Although a user interface 

component is the object of the first two steps, the third 

step simply recites “outputting commands to the data 

storage device,” without tying that outputting to a particular processor or to the antecedent user interface. See id. 

The language of these claims does not, as the district 

court assumed, require the user interface to issue the 

“shaped commands” recited in the claims. This is consistent with the court’s interpretation of the other claim 

elements, and with the specification, which discloses an 

embodiment where the shaped command originates from 

the device itself, J.A. 86. Thus, it was error for the district court to grant summary judgment for these claims. 

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12 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

Claims 9 and 15 pose a greater challenge, however, 

because they recite an apparatus comprising “a processor” 

that executes certain process steps “to generate a user 

interface,” “to alter settings in the user interface,” and “to 

output commands to the data storage device.” See, e.g., 

’473C1 patent col 2 ll. 7–22 (reexamined claim 9). This 

court has “repeatedly emphasized that an indefinite 

article ‘a’ or ‘an’ in patent parlance carries the meaning of 

‘one or more’ in open-ended claims containing the transitional phrase ‘comprising.’” KCJ Corp. v. Kinetic Concepts, Inc., 223 F.3d 1351, 1356 (Fed. Cir. 2000). The 

exceptions to this rule are “extremely limited: a patentee 

must ‘evince [ ] a clear intent’ to limit ‘a’ or ‘an’ to ‘one.’” 

Baldwin Graphic Sys., Inc. v. Siebert, Inc., 512 F.3d 1338, 

1342 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Thus, absent a clear intent in the 

claims themselves, the specification, or the prosecution 

history, we interpret “a processor” as “one or more processors.” 

Here, we find no such evidence clearly limiting “a processor” to a singular processor. While it is true that the 

patentee recited other claim terms in the plural, e.g., 

“output commands,” “alter settings,” or “input signals,”

this does not compel a departure from our general rule 

that “a” means “one or more” when following the openended term “comprising.” Such a conclusion is bolstered 

by the specification’s plain disclosure of an embodiment 

where “seeks” are controlled by a “separate controller 

dedicated to the disk drive.” ’473 patent col. 10 ll. 6–14. 

Thus, it was error for the district court to grant summary 

judgment for these claims.

Claims 1, 3, and 5, likewise, recite “a processor,” but 

do so in the context of reciting the function of the “user 

interface.” Specifically, claim 1 recites a “[u]ser interface 

for . . . working with a processor . . . comprising:” a means 

for controlling seek time on a data storage device, and a 

“means for causing the processor to output commands to 

the data storage device.” ’473C1 patent col. 1 ll. 22–37 

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(reexamined claim 1). Here, unlike claims 9 and 15, the 

language and structure of claim 1 demonstrate a clear 

intent to tie the processor that “output[s] commands to 

the data storage device” to the “user interface.” Specifically, claim 1 recites “a processor” in the preamble before

recitation of “comprising,” and the claim body uses the 

definite article “the” to refer to the “processor.” This 

reference to “the processor,” referring back to the “a 

processor” recited in preamble, supports a conclusion that 

the recited user interface is “operatively working with” 

the same processor to perform all of the recited steps. In 

other words, the claim language requires a processor 

associated with the user interface to issue the shaped 

commands of the claims. Given this claim language, 

which contrasts with the claims described above that 

allow for multiple processors, we conclude that claims 1, 

3, and 5 require the user interface to work with a single 

processor in performing all of the claim steps. Under this 

construction, the Compaq computers do not meet each 

limitation of the claims, because the “user interface” 

processor does not send shaped commands to the hard 

drive.

On appeal, Compaq argues that in a 2008 reexamination, Convolve disclaimed a system in which a processor 

other than the “user interface” processor performs the 

“outputting commands” function. According to Compaq, 

Convolve traversed an anticipation rejection based on the 

“Ray Thesis” by arguing that, unlike the claimed invention, “the commands of Ray did not originate from a host 

computer user interface.” J.A. 4218–19. We disagree. 

The prosecution history does not clearly disclaim a system 

in which a processor other than the “user interface” 

processor issues the shaped commands. In the face of an 

anticipation rejection based on the Ray Thesis, the patentee argued that the prior art does not disclose a host 

processor at all, J.A. 5020, or a user interface that is in 

any way involved in the “outputting commands” step—not 

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14 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

that the Ray method lacks a user interface that itself 

issues “outputting commands,” see J.A. 5021. And the 

examiner agreed that “Ray does not disclose a host processor running a user interface . . . .” J.A. 4219. 

To the extent the examiner suggested in a later office 

action that “the user interface runs on the processor of the 

host computer, but not on the processor of the disk drive,” 

the applicant objected and argued that the ’473 patent 

discloses that “the user interface can run (i) on the processor of the host computer, (ii) on the processor of the 

disk drive, (iii) or both.” J.A. 5046. The examiner subsequently allowed the claims. Although there is some 

evidence that the examiner also understood the claims to 

require that all functions occur on a user interface “running on the processor external to the data storage device,”

J.A. 4218–19, it is not clear from the record that allowance was based on this understanding, or that the patentee disclaimed this claim scope. Thus, we conclude that 

the district court did not err in granting summary judgment that Compaq’s F10 BIOS does not meet the “commands” limitation in claims 1, 3, and 5. But, we find the 

district court erred by interpreting the remaining asserted claims as requiring the processor associated with the 

user interface to also generate the claimed commands. 

III

Having concluded that the district court erred in 

granting summary judgment of non-infringement with 

respect to the “commands” limitation, we turn to the 

intervening rights inquiry. “A patentee of a patent that 

survives reexamination is only entitled to infringement 

damages for the time period between the date of issuance 

of the original claims and the date of the reexamined 

claims if the original and the reexamined claims are 

‘substantially identical.’” R & L Carriers, Inc. v. Qualcomm, Inc., 801 F.3d 1346, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (quoting 

35 U.S.C. § 252 (2012)). “[I]t is the scope of the claim that 

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 15

must be identical, not that identical words must be used.” 

Slimfold Mfg. Co., Inc. v. Kinkead Indus., Inc., 810 F.2d 

1113, 1116 (Fed. Cir. 1987). As a result, amendments 

made during reexamination do not necessarily compel a 

conclusion that the scope of the claims has been substantively changed. See, e.g., Bloom Eng’g Co., 129 F.3d at 

1250 (“There is no absolute rule for determining whether 

an amended claim is legally identical to an original 

claim.”). This is true even where the claims at issue were 

amended during reexamination after a rejection based on 

prior art. Laitram Corp. v. NEC Corp., 952 F.2d 1357, 

1362–63 (Fed. Cir. 1991) (“Laitram I”); see also R&L 

Carriers, 801 F.3d at 1350–51 (emphasizing that the 

reasoning for the amendment does not matter; the focus is 

on the scope of the claims). Rather, “[t]o determine 

whether a claim change is substantive it is necessary to 

analyze the claims of the original and the reexamined 

patents in light of the particular facts, including the prior 

art, the prosecution history, other claims, and any other 

pertinent information.” Laitram I, 952 F.2d at 1362–63. 

In determining the scope of the claims, we apply the 

traditional claim construction principles of Phillips v. 

AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc), 

paying particular attention to the “examiner’s focus in 

allowing the claims” after amendment. R & L Carriers, 

801 F.3d at 1351; see also Laitram Corp. v. NEC Corp.,

163 F.3d 1342, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (Laitram IV) (When

an amendment is made during the reexamination proceedings to overcome a prior art rejection, that is a “highly influential piece of prosecution history.”). On appeal, 

we “review the district court’s subsidiary factual findings 

on the scope of the reexamined and original claims for 

clear error, but the ultimate conclusion regarding the 

scope of the claims de novo.” R & L Carriers, 801 F.3d at 

1350 (citing Teva, 135 S. Ct. at 841–42). 

In this case, the patentee added the modifier “seek” in 

front of “acoustic noise” during the 2008 reexamination 

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16 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

proceedings after a prior art rejection. Our task, therefore, is to determine whether the pre-2008 reexamination 

claims are limited to “seek acoustic noise” or whether the 

original claims cover both seek and spindle acoustic noise. 

Applying the Phillips framework, we conclude that the 

claims were originally limited to seek acoustic noise, and 

the addition of the word “seek” did not alter the scope of 

the claims.

A 

The proper claim construction is “the meaning that 

the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the 

art in question at the time of the invention, i.e., as of the 

effective filing date of the patent application.” Phillips,

415 F.3d at 1313. The specification “is the single best 

guide to the meaning of a disputed term” and is usually 

“dispositive.” Id. at 1315 (citation omitted). On their 

face, the original claims recite only “acoustic noise,” which 

could encompass any manner of acoustic noise, including 

that generated from the spindle. But when read in conjunction with the remaining claim limitations and in light 

of the specification and prosecution history, a person of 

ordinary skill in the art would understand the claims to 

be limited to seek acoustic noise. 

The specification does not use the term “seek acoustic 

noise” or expressly exclude acoustic noise generated by 

spindle rotation, and, at some points, it teaches that

acoustic noise can arise from more than one type of vibration. See, e.g., ’473 patent col. 2 ll. 5–10; id. at col. 9 ll. 

60–67. However, the focus of the specification is on the 

seek process and the noise it generates. For example, the 

specification states that “the present invention” is directed to employing a “dynamic system” to “reduc[e] 

unwanted vibrations, which, if unchecked, could lead to 

disk read/write errors or excessive noise.” Id. at col. 1 

ll. 15–20. And the only vibrations and noise described in 

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ment of the disk drive’s seek arm—nowhere in the Background or elsewhere in the specification is mention made 

of noise caused by spindle motor operation or any other 

form of acoustic noise. See, e.g., ’473 patent col. 1 ll. 28–

36; id. at col. 19 ll. 6–32 (describing vibration and acoustic 

noise caused by movement of the seek arm). 

This understanding is reinforced by other claim limitations. For example, the claims expressly tie “acoustic 

noise” to “seek time” by reciting settings for “seek time” 

and “acoustic noise” “in inverse relation.” See, e.g., J.A. 

154 (claim 10). Although not explicit in the claims, the 

specification makes clear that changes in “seek time” 

result only from increasing or decreasing the speed at 

which the arm in the hard drive moves from track-totrack. See ’473 patent col. 1 ll. 39–43 (“The drive’s seek 

time comprises the time it takes for the drive’s head to 

come to rest at a position where the head can perform a 

read/write operation on a particular track.”); see also id. 

at col. 6 l. 65–col. 7 l. 3 (“Disk drive noise level and seek 

time vary inversely along the continuum, meaning that, 

as the noise level of the disk drive progressively increases, 

the seek time of the disk drive progressively decreases. 

Likewise, as the noise level of the disk drive progressively 

decreases, the seek time of the disk drive progressively 

increases.”); id. at col. 7 ll. 31–35 (“[T]here is an effective 

trade-off between seek time and noise level, meaning that 

as seek time increases, noise level decreases and vice 

versa.”). To be sure, changes in spindle rotation speed, 

which generate acoustic noise, may affect the time needed 

to read the storage device. But read time is a separate 

concept from seek time. There is no evidence in the 

record from which we can conclude that a reduction in 

spindle speed is in any way connected to seek speed.

Seagate thus cannot show that there is any relation 

between “seek time” and acoustic noise other than the 

noise generated by the movement of the seek arm.

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18 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

Lastly, the “outputting commands” step of the claimed 

method further suggests that the claims are limited to 

seek acoustic noise. This step requires outputting commands that “alter seek trajectory shape . . . to reduce 

unwanted frequencies . . . in accordance with the altered 

settings.” In other words, one means of reducing the 

claimed “acoustic noise” is specifically directed to the seek 

process (seek trajectory shape) and the “unwanted frequencies” associated with that process. 

B 

While the specification, in and of itself, may not require the “seek acoustic noise” construction, the prosecution history of the ’473 patent before the 2008 

reexamination demonstrates that acoustic noise is limited 

to “seek” acoustic noise. In an office action dated March 

26, 2001, the Patent Office rejected several of the claims 

as anticipated or obvious in light of two prior art references: Rowan and Koizumi. The Patent Office determined 

that Rowan teaches a mechanism for controlling seek 

time and both electrical noise and acoustic noise from the 

spindle motor, J.A. 1893, and that Koizumi teaches 

“reduc[ing] the spindle speed to achieve the quiet mode,” 

J.A. 1896. In response, on April 2, 2001, the patentee 

amended the claims “to state explicitly that the noise to 

be controlled is acoustic noise as opposed to electrical 

noise.” J.A. 1909. In explaining the reasoning for the 

amendment, the applicant went further and made clear 

that the acoustic noise problems addressed by the claims 

and the specification are limited to those generated by the 

seek function, not the spindle motor. See J.A. 1910 (explaining that “as now claimed, it is the acoustic noise level 

of the data storage device that is controlled by changing 

seek trajectory shape to reduce unwanted frequencies by 

shaping input signals to the data storage device”). The 

applicant also emphasized that “the acoustic noise reduction taught by Rowan deals only with control of the spindle motor, not with control of seek.” J.A. 1910. As for the 

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combination of Rowan and Koizumi, the applicant argued 

that the combination fails to render obvious the claimed 

invention because “the acoustic noise reduction technique 

of Rowan . . . involves altering control of only the spindle 

motor to reduce acoustic noise.” J.A. 1911. And there 

would be no motivation to combine Koizumi, which “reduced the spindle speed to achieve the quiet mode,” “with 

a reference that modifies the seek operation as opposed to 

spindle speed to reduce noise.” J.A. 1912. 

To the extent the specification alone does not limit the 

claims to seek acoustic noise, these prosecution history 

statements show a clear intent to limit the scope of the 

claims to seek acoustic noise—i.e., acoustic noise generated by the movement of the drive’s arm and read/write 

head during the seek process. We note further that the 

appellees themselves submitted a proposed construction 

for the term “acoustic noise level of the data storage 

device” that expressly excluded “audible noise emanating 

from the spindle motor of the ‘data storage device.’” J.A. 

656. 

C 

The prosecution history of the 2008 reexamination—a 

“highly influential” piece of evidence in the intervening 

rights inquiry, Laitram IV, 163 F.3d at 1348—does not 

compel a different result. Applying the broadest reasonable interpretation, the examiner focused exclusively on 

the language of the claims at the expense of the clear 

language in the specification and prior examination 

history. Indeed, the examiner stated that under the 

broadest reasonable interpretation standard “limitations 

are not read into the claims” and expressly rejected the 

patentee’s attempt to interpret the claims in light of the 

specification. See, e.g., J.A. 4932 (“In summary, the 

examiner submits that Patent owners have set forth 

narrow arguments, and relying largely on elements found 

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20 CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 

only in the ’473 specification, that are more specific than 

required by the broad limitations of the claims.”). 

In the intervening rights analysis, our task is to interpret the scope of the claims per the Phillips standard, 

see Laitram IV, 163 F.3d at 1346–47, and under the 

correct standard, the specification “is the single best guide 

to the meaning of the disputed term,” and is usually 

dispositive, Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1313. “In addition to 

consulting the specification, we have held that a court 

should also consider the patent’s prosecution history, if it 

is in evidence.” Id. at 1317 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the examiner’s finding under 

the broadest reasonable interpretation that the claims are 

not limited to “seek acoustic noise” cannot be dispositive. 

To the extent that the district court adopted this reasoning wholesale without accounting for the differences 

between the broadest reasonable interpretation standard 

and Phillips, the court erred. 

In sum, we conclude that the addition of the term 

“seek” before “acoustic noise” did not alter the scope of the 

claim. In so concluding, we decline to give significant 

weight to the patentee’s and the examiner’s use of the 

term “clarify” or “clarifying” in describing the amendment 

in prosecution. The inquiry must focus on a case-by-case 

analysis of the scope of the claims before and after claim 

amendment, which gives rise to the intervening rights 

challenge. See Laitram I, 952 F.2d at 1360–61 (rejecting 

a per se rule and emphasizing that each case is decided on 

its facts). Here, the language of the claims, read in light 

of the specification and prosecution history, especially the 

applicant’s 2001 remarks and amendment, compel a 

conclusion that the claims as originally drafted were 

limited to seek acoustic noise despite the lack of an express recitation in the claims. 

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CONVOLVE, INC. v. COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. 21

IV

In Convolve I, Compaq argued that the accused products do not maintain an inverse relationship between seek 

time and acoustic noise for all seeks, regardless of length, 

as required by the claims. We declined to reach that 

argument and left “those questions . . . to the trial court in 

the first instance.” Convolve I, 527 F. App’x at 932. 

Compaq again raised the argument below, and again the 

district court declined to reach it. J.A. 24–25. And again 

on appeal, Compaq asks this court to rule in the first 

instance on its “inverse relationship” argument. But for 

the same reasons articulated in Convolve I, we decline to 

do so. The district court may consider this issue on remand. 

V 

For the reasons discussed above, we affirm the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment that Seagate’s 

ATA/SCSI hard drives do not infringe the asserted claims 

because they do not meet the user interface limitation of 

the claims. Likewise, we affirm the district court’s grant 

of summary judgment of non-infringement by Compaq’s 

accused products as to claims 1, 3, and 5 because Compaq’s F10 BIOS does not meet the “commands” limitation 

of those claims. But we vacate the court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement by Compaq’s accused 

products as to claims 7–15 because the F10 BIOS does 

meet the “commands” limitation. Finally, because the 

addition of the term “seek” in reexamination did not alter 

the scope of the claims, we reverse the district court’s

grant of summary judgment of non-infringement based on 

its determination that liability is precluded by intervening rights.

AFFIRMED-IN-PART, VACATED-IN-PART, 

REVERSED-IN-PART, AND REMANDED

No costs.

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