Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01246/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01246-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Avid Technology, Inc.
Appellant
Harmonic, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

HARMONIC, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2015-1246

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Delaware in No. 1:11-cv-01040-GMS, Judge 

Gregory M. Sleet.

______________________ 

Decided: January 29, 2016 

______________________ 

GREGORY A. CASTANIAS, Jones Day, Washington, DC, 

argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by DAVID 

B. COCHRAN, JOSEPH M. SAUER, Cleveland, OH; JOSHUA R.

NIGHTINGALE, Pittsburgh, PA.

BORIS FELDMAN, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, 

PC, Palo Alto, CA, argued for defendant-appellee. Also 

represented by JAMES C. YOON; ROBIN L. BREWER, San 

Francisco, CA; GIDEON A. SCHOR, New York, NY.

______________________ 

Before REYNA, TARANTO, and STOLL, Circuit Judges.

Case: 15-1246 Document: 52-2 Page: 1 Filed: 01/29/2016
2 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

TARANTO, Circuit Judge.

The jury in this case found that Harmonic, Inc. did 

not infringe two patents asserted by Avid Technology, Inc. 

On one of two claim elements that were the focus of the 

dispute at trial, the district court gave the jury a narrow 

construction based on what the court determined to be a 

prosecution disclaimer. We hold that construction to be 

incorrect. We also hold that the error on this central trial 

issue requires setting aside the non-infringement verdicts, which were general verdicts as to each patent,

because Harmonic has not argued that the evidence 

compels a finding of non-infringement independently of 

the construction error. Avid therefore is entitled to a new 

trial on infringement, though satisfaction of this particular claim element is now settled because Harmonic has 

not here disputed Avid’s contention that Harmonic’s 

system satisfies this claim element when properly construed. Avid has not, however, shown entitlement to 

more than a new trial, i.e., to entry of a judgment of 

infringement: the evidence does not compel a finding of 

infringement of the other claim element in dispute—

which at present is without a claim construction. Accordingly, we vacate the judgment and remand for a new trial.

BACKGROUND

Avid asserted two patents against Harmonic in this 

case—U.S. Patent No. 6,760,808 and No. 7,487,309. Both 

patents concern data storage systems that allow users to 

store and retrieve large files such as movies. The systems 

include three categories of components of particular 

significance here: multiple storage units that store data; a 

client application, which reads data from and writes data 

to the storage units; and a central controller that can 

perform various facilitative functions. A fourth component is an option: a centralized repository of addresses of 

data stored in particular units.

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AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 3

In the system described by Avid’s patents, when a client wishes to store (“write”) a file, such as a movie, the 

system splits the file into “segments.” ’309 patent, col. 8, 

lines 57–58. The segments are distributed among various 

storage units and stored in duplicate at different units 

(one primary unit and one backup) chosen “from the list of 

storage units available for storing the selected segment.” 

Id., col. 9, lines 12–14. The client sends each segment to 

two storage units. Id., col. 9, lines 65–66; id., col. 10, lines 

1–3, 37–39. 

The system creates and updates segment tables listing file segments and their storage-unit locations. Id., col. 

8, lines 46–52; id., col. 10, lines 21–23. “Segment tables 

may be stored together, as a catalog. Catalogs may be 

stored on a catalog manager 49, at individual clients, at a 

central database, or may be distributed among several 

databases or clients.” Id., col. 7, lines 35–39. “[C]atalogs 

also may be treated as data of which copies of its segments are randomly distributed among the storage units.” 

Id., col. 19, lines 21–23.

The referred-to “catalog manager” is a “database, accessible by the [client] applications,” containing “information about the data available on the storage units.” 

Id., col. 6, lines 54–57. (The catalog manager 49, in 

Figure 1, may be combined with another database called 

an “asset manager,” also shown as item 49 in Figure 1. 

Id., col. 18, lines 51–55.) The catalog manager may play a 

role in monitoring availability of storage units for storage 

in the first place. “There are several ways to determine 

whether storage units are available, including polling the 

storage units, handling exceptions from the storage units, 

or by the storage units periodically informing an application or applications of their availability. In one embodiment of the invention, in addition to maintaining a 

catalog of segment tables for each file, the catalog manager 49 or some other client may monitor which storage 

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4 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

units 42 are active in the system.” Id., col. 17, lines 52–

60. 

When a client wishes to retrieve (“read”) a file, the client determines which storage units have the needed 

segments, and sends a request for a given segment to a 

storage unit, which transmits it to the client. Id., col. 11, 

lines 4–19; id., col. 20, line 52 through col. 21, line 21. 

Claim 1 of the ’808 patent is illustrative of the claims: 

1. A distributed data storage system for allowing 

one or more client systems to access data, comprising:

a plurality of independent storage units for 

storing the data;

wherein the data is stored on the plurality of 

storage units in files, wherein each file includes 

segments of data and redundancy information for 

each segment, wherein each segment has an identifier, and wherein, for each file, the segments and 

the redundancy information for each segment are 

distributed among the plurality of storage units; 

wherein each storage unit comprises:

means for maintaining information associating the identifier of each segment stored on the 

storage unit with the location of each segment on 

the storage unit;

means for receiving a request from one of the 

client systems for a segment of a file, wherein a 

request includes the identifier of the segment of 

the file; and

means, operative in response to a request 

from one of the client systems for a segment of a 

file, for retrieving the requested segment of the 

file from the storage unit using the information 

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AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 5

associating the identifier of each segment stored 

on the storage unit with the location of each segment on the storage unit; and

means for sending the requested segment to 

the client system.

Id., col. 28, lines 2–27 (emphases added). The two 

phrases we have italicized became the focus of this case. 

The parties have referred to the second italicized claim 

element as the “in files” element.

The accused Harmonic system, called “MediaGrid,” is 

a distributed data storage system in which various storage units (ContentServers) store data with redundancy. 

The system includes a central controller (ContentDirector), which keeps track of the storage units and what 

segments of a file (slices) are stored on them, and storage 

units keep track of segment addresses within their own 

memories. J.A. 1881, 1876–77, 1883–84, 1909. A client 

seeking to retrieve the segments must ask the ContentDirector to identify the relevant storage units. Once the 

client has that information, the client deals directly with 

the identified ContentServers to obtain the segments, 

with the ContentServers themselves finding the needed 

segments within their memories and without the ContentDirector acting as an intermediary for the data transfer. See J.A. 2305, 2395, 2828. 

In the prosecution history of Avid’s patents, one piece 

of prior art played a role that is significant here—a patent 

issued to Boll, U.S. Patent No. 5,644,720. Boll describes a 

client interface (i.e., a central controller) that receives a 

request from an application. ’720 patent, col. 2, lines 45–

58; id., col. 2, lines 20–23. That request includes “a list of 

server attributes necessary to complete the transaction 

request,” ranked in order of importance. Id., col. 4, lines 

27–31. The central controller selects which storage unit 

to use to fulfill the request. Id., col. 2, lines 54–58; id., col. 

4, lines 20–23. The central controller sorts the available 

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6 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

storage units in order of preference. Id., col. 5, lines 14–

17. If only one storage unit meets the criteria, the central 

controller transmits the storage-unit location to the 

application. Id., col. 5, lines 47–50. If more than one 

storage unit meets the criteria, the central controller 

randomly chooses one of the storage units. Id., col. 5, 

lines 50–61. The central controller then either allows the 

application to communicate directly with the storage unit, 

id., col. 3, lines 47–50; id., col. 7, lines 1–4, or “serve[s] as 

an intermediate link” connecting the application to the 

storage unit, id., col. 3, lines 50–52.

The district court gave the jury a claim construction of 

the “independent storage unit” claim element, basing that 

construction on statements Avid made in the prosecution 

history. It is undisputed that Avid properly preserved its 

objection to the construction. The other claim element at 

issue, the “in files” element, went to the jury without a 

clarifying construction, over neither party’s objection. 

The jury rejected Harmonic’s validity challenge to Avid’s 

patents and found that Harmonic did not infringe. 

Avid challenged the non-infringement judgment by 

post-trial motions. It argued that the claim construction

regarding the “independent storage unit” element was 

incorrect and that, under a correct claim construction, 

that claim element is clearly met. And it argued that 

there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find noninfringement of the “in files” element. It sought at least a 

new trial on the first ground and judgment of infringement on the two grounds combined. Harmonic does not 

dispute that Avid duly preserved those contentions. The 

district court denied Avid’s post-trial motions. Avid 

Tech., Inc. v. Harmonic Inc., 2014 WL 7206301 (D. Del. 

Dec. 17, 2014). 

Avid appeals the non-infringement judgment. Harmonic does not cross-appeal the judgment rejecting its 

validity challenges; it also does not argue for vacatur of 

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AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 7

the non-invalidity judgment if we agree with Avid’s claimconstruction position. We have jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION

We review the district court’s claim construction de 

novo because it was based entirely on an intrinsicevidence determination about the meaning of the prosecution history, and not on any evidence about extra-patent 

understandings of language or about other facts. See, e.g., 

Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 831, 

841 (2015); Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. v. Covidien, Inc., 

796 F.3d 1312, 1323 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Teva Pharm. USA, 

Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 789 F.3d 1335, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2015);

Shire Dev., LLC v. Watson Pharm., Inc., 787 F.3d 1359, 

1364 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Cadence Pharms. Inc. v Exela 

PharmSci Inc., 780 F.3d 1364, 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2015);

MobileMedia Ideas LLC v. Apple Inc., 780 F.3d 1159, 1169 

(Fed. Cir. 2015); Fenner Invs., Ltd. v. Cellco P’ship, 778 

F.3d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2015); In re Papst Licensing 

Digital Camera Litig., 778 F.3d 1255, 1261 (Fed. Cir. 

2015). Infringement is a factual question, InTouch 

Techs., Inc. v. VGo Commc’ns, Inc., 751 F.3d 1327, 1338–

39 (Fed. Cir. 2014), and we review judgment-as-a-matterof-law determinations de novo, asking, as the district 

court did, whether only one answer to that question is 

reasonable given the evidence admitted at trial. See 

Frolow v. Wilson Sporting Goods Co., 710 F.3d 1303, 1308 

(Fed. Cir. 2013); InTouch Techs., 751 F.3d at 1338; 

Graboff v. Colleran Firm, 744 F.3d 128, 134 (3d Cir. 

2014).

A 

The district court ruled that, during prosecution, Avid 

had disclaimed a system in which the central controller 

tells the client which storage unit the client should deal 

with during read and write operations. J.A. 89–90 n.1. 

On that basis, the court instructed the jury that “indeCase: 15-1246 Document: 52-2 Page: 7 Filed: 01/29/2016
8 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

pendent storage units” means “storage units which are 

not centrally controlled and whose memory addresses are 

not globally allocated” and that “systems with independent storage units cannot use a central controller to access 

data, and, in particular, cannot use a central controller 

that identifies the storage unit on which data is stored in 

response to client requests.” J.A. 39 (emphasis added); see 

Avid, 2014 WL 7206301, at *3. 

We conclude that the district court erred. The demanding standard for finding a disclaimer is not met. We 

therefore reverse the claim construction given to the jury.

The prosecution history of a patent, though “less useful for claim construction purposes” than the claim language and written description, plays various roles in

resolving uncertainties about claim scope. Phillips v. 

AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en 

banc). When the prosecution history is used solely to 

support a conclusion of patentee disclaimer, the standard 

for justifying the conclusion is a high one. “[F]or prosecution disclaimer to attach, our precedent requires that the 

alleged disavowing actions or statements made during 

prosecution be both clear and unmistakable.” Omega 

Eng’g, Inc. v. Raytek Corp., 334 F.3d 1314, 1325–26 (Fed. 

Cir. 2003); see Storage Tech. Corp. v. Cisco Sys., Inc., 329 

F.3d 823, 833 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (“We therefore do not 

consider the applicants’ statement to be a clear and 

unambiguous disavowal of claim scope as required to 

depart from the meaning of the term provided by the 

written description.”). Where the alleged disavowal is 

ambiguous, or even “amenable to multiple reasonable 

interpretations,” Cordis Corp. v. Medtronic AVE, Inc., 339 

F.3d 1352, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2003), we have declined to find 

prosecution disclaimer. Omega Eng’g, 334 F.3d at 1325 

(“[W]e have thus consistently rejected prosecution statements too vague or ambiguous to qualify as a disavowal of 

claim scope.”); Rheox, Inc. v. Entact, Inc., 276 F.3d 1319, 

1327 (Fed. Cir. 2002).

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AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 9

The district court relied on two passages from an Avid 

submission during the prosecution history: 

[T]he claimed system, by virtue of the “independent” storage units, avoids using a central controller to access data. In particular, storage units 

“receiv[e] . . . request[s] from one of the client systems for a segment of a file.” Clients do not issue 

requests to a central controller that in turn identifies storage units that store the data and issues requests to storage units.

J.A. 582 (alterations in original) (italics added to emphasis key sentence now at issue). 

In Boll, a client asks a centralized interface 24 to 

provide access to a server and receives from this 

interface an identity or connection data for a server to which the client is assigned. The client then 

performs its transactions with the assigned server. In contrast, the present invention relates to a 

distributed storage system in which data for a file 

is distributed among multiple independent storage units. Boll’s assignment of a client to a server 

through a centralized interface for its transaction 

in [sic] contrary to the claim limitations noted

above. 

J.A. 583 (alteration in original). Those passages, however, are readily susceptible to a narrower reading than the 

one needed to support the district court’s disclaimer 

conclusion.1

1 The district court mentioned an immediately preceding passage, in which Avid stated: “The claimed system, by virtue of its ‘independent’ storage units, avoids 

global allocation of the available storage. In particular, 

the storage units are independent because clients are 

 

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10 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

In the first passage, Avid stated that its system

“avoids using a central controller to access data” and that 

“clients do not issue requests to a central controller that

in turn identifies storage units that store the data and 

issues requests to storage units.” J.A. 582. But the 

district court misread that passage. The first portion does 

not itself say what exactly “access[ing] data” entails; it is 

the second portion that identifies what Avid means. 

What that portion says, by its terms, is that a central 

controller is excluded if it performs both of two functions: 

it “identifies storage units that store the data and issues 

requests to storage units.” Id. (emphasis added). The 

language on its face does not exclude a central controller 

that performs only one or the other of the two stated 

functions—which would have been the meaning if the 

phrase had used “or” rather than “and.” In any event, it 

does not do so clearly, as would be required to find a 

disclaimer of a central controller that merely identifies 

the storage units. 

In the second prosecution-history passage, Avid distinguished Boll, stating that “Boll’s assignment of a client 

to a server through a centralized interface for its transaction [is] contrary to the claim limitations noted above.” 

J.A. 583. The district court read more into the passage 

than is clearly there and thus departed from the high 

standard for finding a disclaimer. Rather than disclaiming a system in which the central controller tells the client 

aware of ‘identifiers’ of segments and storage units on 

which segments are stored. The ‘location of each segment 

on [each] storage unit’ is maintained at the storage unit 

on which the segment it is stored.” J.A. 582 (alteration in 

original). The court read that passage as not clearly 

evincing the disclaimer at issue. J.A. 89–90 n.1. In this 

court, Harmonic does not rely on the passage as supporting the disclaimer at issue. We do not discuss it further. 

 

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AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 11

which storage unit contains a given segment, the language can easily be read to be distinguishing Boll on the 

ground that each client application in Boll is connected to 

only one storage unit and conducts all of its transactions 

with that one storage unit. See ’720 patent, col. 3, lines 

30–34; id., col. 5, lines 47–50. In contrast, as described 

above, Avid’s patents contemplate implementing “redundancy” by storing segments of a file on different storage 

units. See ’390 patent, Fig. 1 (showing four segments (1–

4) distributed among four different storage units). 

In short, there was no clear and unmistakable disclaimer of central controllers that provide storage-unitlocation information for retrieving segments. The jury 

instruction limiting “independent storage units” in that 

way was incorrect.

B

That error, undisputedly preserved for review, concerned the legal standard (claim construction) for evaluating a central element of the infringement dispute: 

whether MediaGrid’s ContentDirector, by supplying 

storage-unit-location information to clients seeking data, 

did too much for MediaGrid’s ContentServers to meet the 

“independent storage units” requirement. The error 

requires at least vacatur of the verdict and a remand for a 

new trial unless we can conclude that the error was not 

prejudicial, i.e., was harmless. Because there was no 

separate jury determination of non-infringement on a 

distinct ground, the error in the instruction governing this 

central dispute at trial would be harmless only if a reasonable jury would have been required by the evidence to 

find non-infringement even without the error. See Ecolab, 

Inc. v. Paraclipse, Inc., 285 F.3d 1362, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 

2002) (error is harmless if it “‘could not have changed the 

result,’” i.e., if “‘the same verdict would necessarily be 

reached absent the error’”); NTP, Inc. v. Research In 

Motion, Ltd., 418 F.3d 1282, 1311–12 (Fed. Cir. 2005) 

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12 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

(abrogated on other grounds, see IRIS Corp. v. Japan 

Airlines Corp., 769 F.3d 1359, 1361 n.1 (Fed. Cir. 2014)); 

Seachange Int’l, Inc. v. C-COR, Inc., 413 F.3d 1361, 1381 

(Fed. Cir. 2005); Texas Digital Sys., Inc. v. Telegenix, Inc., 

308 F.3d 1193, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2002); Biodex Corp. v. 

Loredan Biomedical, Inc., 946 F.2d 850, 853–54 (Fed. Cir. 

1991); 11 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, Mary 

Kay Kane, Richard L. Marcus, Adam N. Steinman, Federal Practice & Procedure §§ 2558, 2886 (3d ed. 2015).2

But Harmonic does not even argue for that conclusion. 

Nowhere in its brief does Harmonic argue that the jury 

was required to find non-infringement—on any ground—

even if the “independent storage units” element permits a 

central component that supplies storage-unit-location 

information to a client wishing to retrieve data from 

storage units. In particular, it does not argue that the 

evidence required a non-infringement finding based on 

the other claim element in dispute, the “in files” element; 

its only argument regarding the second at-issue element 

is that the jury could reasonably find that element not to 

be met by MediaGrid. Harmonic Br. 1, 49–64. That is not 

enough, because we cannot infer that the jury did so find. 

Similarly as to the “independent storage units” element 

itself: Harmonic nowhere argues that, even if the con2 The well-established standard for judging harmlessness of legally incorrect jury instructions, and thus 

determining whether a verdict must be set aside and a 

new trial ordered, differs from the equally wellestablished standard governing whether a verdict loser is

entitled to a judgment in its favor as a matter of law 

(whether the evidence can reasonably support the verdict). See Juicy Whip, Inc. v. Orange Bang, Inc., 292 F.3d 

728, 737 (Fed. Cir. 2002); Weinar v. Rollform Inc., 744 

F.2d 797, 810 (Fed. Cir. 1984); Perkin-Elmer Corp. v. 

Computervision Corp., 732 F.2d 888, 893 (Fed. Cir. 1984). 

 

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struction given to the jury was wrong, the evidence still 

required a finding that MediaGrid lacks the required 

independent storage units, whether because of what the 

MediaGrid ContentDirector does or for any other reason. 

Harmonic argues only that the construction was correct 

and the non-infringement verdict was supported by 

substantial evidence. Id. at 1, 30–49. In short, Harmonic 

makes no argument under the proper legal standard to 

answer Avid’s argument that the instructional error was 

prejudicial, requiring a new trial.

Avid actually takes its argument one step further. It 

contends that, once the legally erroneous narrowing of the 

claim construction is reversed, the evidence not only 

permits but requires a finding that the MediaGrid system 

meets the “independent storage units” claim element. 

Avid Br. 46–50. Harmonic presents no argument to the 

contrary. Once one puts aside the incorrect conclusion 

that a central unit’s informing clients of which storage 

units contain desired segments makes the ContentServers 

not “independent,” no argument has been presented to us

for how MediaGrid could, under a proper claim construction, be found not to have the required “independent 

storage units.” The patent’s contemplated role for a 

central “catalog manager,” as discussed above and reflected in claim 19, makes it anything but apparent how 

MediaGrid would fall outside this claim element without 

the legally erroneous construction. Given that, in response to Avid’s argument, Harmonic has simply not 

suggested an alternative claim construction on this point, 

or argued that any such alternative claim construction 

could be found not to reach MediaGrid, satisfaction of this 

claim requirement is now settled. While infringement as 

a whole is to be retried, Harmonic’s assertion of noninfringement based on this claim element is not, thus 

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14 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

narrowing the scope of issues for the new trial on remand.3

C 

What remains is Avid’s argument that it is entitled to 

more than a new trial—that it should be granted judgment as a matter of law. Avid Br. 51–62. Avid contends 

that, on the only other claim element in dispute, the “in 

files” element, the evidence does not allow a reasonable 

finding of non-infringement. We reject the contention. 

The case went to the jury without a construction of the 

key “in files” language, and Avid has not met its burden of 

showing that it has the only reasonable view of the claim 

element as long as it is un-construed. 

In the claimed systems, “the data is stored on the plurality of storage units in files, wherein each file includes 

segments of data and redundancy information for each 

segment, wherein each segment has an identifier, and 

wherein, for each file, the segments and the redundancy 

information for each segment are distributed among the 

plurality of storage units.” ’808 patent, col. 28, lines 6–12 

(emphasis added). See also ’309 patent, col. 28, lines 58–

65. On its face, the “file” language might refer to what 

the client treats as a “file,” such as a scene from a movie, 

to be broken up into segments that are then distributed 

among storage units. J.A. 1943; J.A. 2327. Alternatively, 

the word “file” might refer to a feature of an organization 

system of the storage units themselves, perhaps with a 

single “file” at the storage-unit level including segments 

coming from different client files, i.e., from different 

3 The jury rejected both direct and indirect infringement. Our vacatur covers all of those verdicts, 

because the indirect-infringement verdicts could have 

rested on the jury’s finding of no underlying direct infringement.

 

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movies. See ’309 patent, col. 13, lines 61–65 (“The storage 

unit may have its own file system which may be entirely 

separate from the client file system. All of the segments 

on a storage unit may be stored, for example, in a single 

file at the storage unit.”); ’808 patent, col. 14, lines 1–5 

(same); id., col. 28, lines 50–59 (“A file system for a computer, enabling the computer . . . to read data stored in 

one or more files on the storage units, wherein a file 

includes segments of the data and redundancy information for each segment . . . .”); see also id., col. 10, lines 

37–46; id., col. 14, lines 20–22; ’309 patent, col. 10, lines 

36–45; id., col. 14, lines 13–15 (“If the storage unit has its 

own independent file system, the client file system also 

need not know details of the storage mechanism of the 

storage units.”). 

The district court did not construe the phrase “in 

files” or, therefore, tell the jury whether all of the other 

requirements of the overall claim element must evaluated 

by looking at client-perspective files or storage-unitorganization files. J.A. 8. The court instructed the jury 

simply to give the phrase its “plain and ordinary meaning.” J.A. 8; J.A. 39. It is not clear to us what the jury 

would have found “plain” and “ordinary” about this claim 

element. It is not even clear to us whether Harmonic has 

consistently argued for one interpretation or the other of 

“files” in this claim element See Harmonic Br. 14–16, 21–

24; J.A. 2318–19; J.A. 2328–30. But with the question 

framed without a clarifying construction, Avid has the 

difficult task of showing, based simply on the words, that 

the only reasonable view is that MediaGrid stores data in 

“files” that have all the features required by the claim 

element. We are not persuaded.

Harmonic presented evidence that MediaGrid’s storing of individual client-file segments on its ContentServers may be considered as either not storing them “in files” 

or not doing so in a way that meets the other requireCase: 15-1246 Document: 52-2 Page: 15 Filed: 01/29/2016
16 AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 

ments of the overall “in files” claim element quoted above. 

Harmonic’s expert, Dr. Levy, testified: 

 Q. And why do you believe that a slice does not 

meet the requirements of a file in the claim?

 A. Well, first of all, the files stored in the ContentServers include only a single slice or segment 

of data. And in addition, what is stored in the 

ContentServers does not include redundancy information for the segment.

 Q. Let’s take that one step at a time. Looking at 

the language of the claim, it says, wherein each 

file includes segments of data. Do you see that?

 A. Yes.

 Q. And that is segments, plural?

 A. Yes, it is.

 Q. Is a single slice, does that meet the requirements of a file?

 A. No. This requires segments, plural, so that is 

not what is stored in the ContentServer. 

J.A. 2326–27. Asked about a Harmonic document that 

says, “slices will be saved as individual files,” which might 

suggest that at least storage-unit-level “files” are being 

used, Dr. Levy testified:

 Q. And what does the claim require each file to 

include?

 A. It requires each file to include segments, plural, of data.

 Q. Does an individual slice include multiple segments, sir?

 A. No.

Case: 15-1246 Document: 52-2 Page: 16 Filed: 01/29/2016
AVID TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. HARMONIC, INC. 17

J.A. 2401. See also A2738 (quoting from the testimony of 

Dr. Levy) (“‘What is your basis for the statement data is 

not stored on ContentServers in files?’ Answer: ‘Well, my 

basis is that the ContentServer stores slices of data and it 

does not store them in files in the manner in which the 

claims require.’”). 

Without a claim construction, we are not persuaded 

by Avid that the foregoing testimony is insufficient for a 

jury to find that the MediaGrid system does not satisfy 

the “in files” claim element. That is enough to deny Avid 

judgment of infringement as a matter of law. The case 

therefore must return to the district court for a new trial 

on infringement, within the limits already stated in this 

opinion. On remand the district court may consider

whether the aim of claim construction—to give the finder 

of fact an understandable interpretation of claim scope to 

apply to the accused systems—would be advanced by 

further construing the “in files” claim element. To avoid 

confusion about our mandate but not as an affirmative 

suggestion, we add that in remanding for a “new trial” 

(with no retrying of the “independent storage units” claim 

element), we are not foreclosing any pre-trial resolution of 

the infringement issue that is otherwise appropriate 

substantively and procedurally. Cf. Medisim Ltd. v. 

BestMed, LLC, 758 F.3d 1352, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2014).

CONCLUSION

The judgment of the district court is vacated, and the 

case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with 

this opinion. 

Costs awarded to Avid.

VACATED AND REMANDED

Case: 15-1246 Document: 52-2 Page: 17 Filed: 01/29/2016