Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01479/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01479-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
HBAC Matchmaker Media, Inc.
Appellant
Yahoo! Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v. 

GOOGLE INC., YOUTUBE, LLC, ESPN, INC., 

YAHOO! INC., BRAVO MEDIA LLC, NBC 

ENTERTAINMENT, UNIVERSAL TELEVISION 

NETWORKS, CBS INTERACTIVE, INC., DISNEY 

ONLINE, AMERICAN BROADCASTING 

COMPANIES, INC., VEVO LLC, VIACOM 

INTERNATIONAL INC., BLIP NETWORKS, INC., 

Defendants-Appellees

______________________ 

2015-1447, 2015-1478, 2015-1479, 2015-1480, 

2015-1481, 2015-1521, 2015-1522, 2015-1523

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

District of Delaware in Nos. 1:13-cv-00428-SLR-SRF, 

1:13-cv-00429-SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv-00430-SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv00433-SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv-00436-SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv-00437-

SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv-00438-SLR-SRF, 1:13-cv-00962-SLRSRF, Judge Sue L. Robinson.

______________________ 

Decided: May 31, 2016

______________________ 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 1 Filed: 05/31/2016
2 HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 

BRIAN DAVID LEDAHL, Russ August & Kabat, Los Angeles, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented 

by ERIC JOHN CARSTEN. 

ANDREW JOHN PINCUS, Mayer Brown LLP, Washington, DC, argued for all defendants-appellees. Defendantsappellees Google Inc., YouTube, LLC also represented by 

PAUL WHITFIELD HUGHES. Defendant-appellee Google Inc. 

also represented by MICHAEL J. MALECEK, TIMOTHY CHAO, 

Kaye Scholer LLP, Palo Alto, CA.

EDWARD R. REINES, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, 

Redwood Shores, CA, for defendants-appellees ESPN, 

Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Bravo Media LLC, NBC Entertainment, 

Universal Television Networks, CBS Interactive, Inc., 

Disney Online, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

MILTON SPRINGUT, Springut Law PC, New York, NY, 

for defendants-appellees Vevo LLC, Viacom International 

Inc., Blip Networks, Inc. Defendant-appellee Blip Networks, Inc. also represented by JAMES F. VALENTINE, ERIC 

WEI HOONG OW, Perkins Coie, LLP, Palo Alto, CA.

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, DYK, and STOLL, Circuit 

Judges.

STOLL, Circuit Judge.

HBAC Matchmaker Media, Inc. appeals from stipulated final judgments of noninfringement entered by the 

United States District Court for the District of Delaware

following claim construction of U.S. Patent No. 6,002,393

(the “ ’393 patent”). Because the district court erred in 

construing the term “head end system,” we vacate the 

stipulated judgments of noninfringement and remand for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 2 Filed: 05/31/2016
HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 3

HBAC owns the ’393 patent, which was filed in 1995 

and is titled “System and Method for Delivering Targeted 

Advertisements to Consumers Using Direct Commands.” 

In eight similar complaints, HBAC alleged that several 

providers of internet-based video delivery infringe the 

’393 patent and U.S. Patent No. 5,774,170 (the “ ’170 

patent”).1 The asserted patents relate to systems and 

methods for delivering targeted advertising to consumers’ 

digital devices. 

The term “head end system” appears in each asserted 

independent claim of the ’393 patent. Claim 1 is representative: 

1. A system for delivery of targeted advertisements from a head end system to individual consumers at at least one consumer display site 

comprising:

(a) a control device at the at least one consumer display site; and

(b) a controller at the head end system for 

sending a signal to the control device at the at 

least one display site for causing an advertisement to be displayed at said at least one display 

site intended for a particular consumer; 

(c) the controller at the head end system including a program database supplying program 

materials and a commercial database supplying 

advertisements for display at the at least one display site, the commercial database further storing 

information concerning the type of each advertisement; the head end system further including a 

1 The district court stayed the claims and counterclaims regarding the ’170 patent during this appeal. 

Accordingly, only the ’393 patent is before us. 

 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 3 Filed: 05/31/2016
4 HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 

consumer database having information about a 

consumer at the at least one display site, and an 

instruction formatter having inputs from the consumer database, the program database and the 

commercial database for generating an instruction 

for the control device at the at least one display 

site, the instruction being generated based on the 

type information stored in the commercial database and the information about the consumer at 

the at least one display site and optionally a characteristic of the program materials; the controller 

at the head end system further downloading the 

instruction to the control device at the at least one 

display site to command the control device to select an advertisement from the head end system 

intended for display at the at least one display 

site.

’393 patent col. 13 ll. 28–57 (emphases added). 

Following briefing and argument, on June 3, 2014, the 

district court construed the term “head end system” and,

on June 30, 2014, issued an order clarifying that construction. The district court construed “head end system” to 

mean “[t]he point in a TV system at which all programming is collected and formatted for placement on the TV 

system.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 23. The district court 

subsequently clarified the construction to specify that 

“ ‘TV system’ necessarily utilizes a conventional television 

set and/or set-top box for selecting from (and displaying) 

multiple channels of TV programming.” J.A. 30. The 

court reasoned that “[w]hile plaintiff argues for a broader 

construction of this limitation (to include the internet), 

the specification consistently refers to ‘cable TV,’ ‘television,’ and ‘VCR.’ ” J.A. 23. In its view, both the ’393 

patent and the term “head end system” “are directed to 

the specific technology platforms disclosed in the specification, i.e., conventional television systems, especially 

cable TV systems and other multichannel TV systems.” 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 4 Filed: 05/31/2016
HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 5

J.A. 30. The district court also noted that “the figures in 

the ’393 patent represent TV systems and more particularly cable television.” J.A. 24. 

Based on the district court’s construction of the term 

“head end system” to specifically exclude advertisement 

delivery over the internet, the parties agreed to judgments of noninfringement of all asserted claims of the 

’393 patent in each of the eight cases. HBAC reserved the 

right to appeal the district court’s claim construction. 

Pursuant to the stipulations, the district court entered 

final judgments under Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of 

Civil Procedure, and HBAC now appeals. The cases have 

been consolidated for purposes of our review. We have 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION 

A. Standard of Review

“[W]hen the district court reviews only evidence intrinsic to the patent (the patent claims and specifications, 

along with the patent’s prosecution history), the judge’s 

determination will amount solely to a determination of 

law, and the Court of Appeals will review that construction de novo.” Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 

S.Ct. 831, 841 (2015). “On the other hand, in considering 

extrinsic evidence, we review the subsidiary factual 

findings underlying the district court’s claim construction 

for clear error.” Vasudevan Software, Inc. v. MicroStrategy, Inc., 782 F.3d 671, 676 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (citing Teva, 

135 S.Ct. at 840). 

B. Claim Construction

Claim construction begins with the words of the 

claim. Imaginal Systematic, LLC v. Leggett & Platt, Inc., 

805 F.3d 1102, 1108 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The words of a 

claim are generally given their ordinary and customary 

meaning, which is the meaning that the term would have 

to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 5 Filed: 05/31/2016
6 HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 

invention. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312–13 

(Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc). “The ordinary meaning of a 

claim term may be determined by reviewing a variety of 

sources, including the claims themselves, other intrinsic 

evidence including the written description and the prosecution history, and dictionaries and treatises.” Teleflex, 

Inc. v. Ficosa N. Am. Corp., 299 F.3d 1313, 1325 (Fed. Cir. 

2002) (internal citations omitted). The claims “must be 

read in view of the specification, of which they are a part.” 

Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1315 (quoting Markman v. Westview 

Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 979 (Fed. Cir. 1995) 

(en banc)). “That claims are interpreted in light of the 

specification does not mean that everything expressed in 

the specification must be read into all the claims.” Raytheon Co. v. Roper Corp., 724 F.2d 951, 957 (Fed. Cir. 

1983). Rather, “our focus must be on the claims.” Teleflex, 299 F.3d at 1326.

In this case, the district court erred in construing the 

term “head end system” to require a TV system that 

“necessarily utilizes” a conventional television set or settop box. First, the claims themselves nowhere indicate 

that a “head end system” is limited to a TV system. To 

the contrary, independent claims 55 and 56 specifically 

add a TV limitation, reciting “a method for targeting TV 

advertisements from a head end system.” ’393 patent 

col. 19 ll. 29, 58. The district court’s construction thus 

introduces avoidable redundancy into the language of the 

claims. We have repeatedly emphasized that a “claim 

construction that gives meaning to all the terms of the 

claim is preferred over one that does not do so.” Merck & 

Co. v. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc., 395 F.3d 1364, 1372 

(Fed. Cir. 2005). 

We next note, as did the district court, that the term 

“head end system” is not defined or recited in the specification. J.A. 23. “When the intrinsic evidence is silent as 

to the plain [or ordinary] meaning of a term, it is entirely 

appropriate for the district court to look to dictionaries or 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 6 Filed: 05/31/2016
HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 7

other extrinsic sources for context—to aid in arriving at 

the plain meaning of a claim term.” Helmsderfer v. Bobrick Washroom Equip., Inc., 527 F.3d 1379, 1382 

(Fed. Cir. 2008). We thus look outside the specification of 

the ’393 patent to discern the meaning of “head end 

system” to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time 

of the invention. Contemporaneous technical dictionaries 

demonstrate that, at the time of the invention, “head end” 

was broadly understood as the origination point in a 

communication system and was not limited to a conventional TV or cable system. For example, a 1995 technical 

dictionary defines “head end” as “[t]he originating point in 

a communications system.” J.A. 923, The Computer 

Glossary 177 (7th ed. 1995). It describes that in cable TV, 

“the head end is where the cable company has its satellite 

dish and TV antenna for receiving incoming programming.” Id. It further states, though, that in the context of 

“online services, the head end is the service company’s 

computer system and databases.” Id. Another 1995 

technical dictionary describes “headend” as a term that is 

“becoming a general purpose term for describing source 

nodes in the architecture of the information superhighway

that are responsible for storing and serving up the various 

elements of content that users of the highway want.” 

J.A. 928, Multimedia Technology from A to Z 77 (1995). 

The dictionary continues, stating that “[a]s the superhighway takes greater shape, headends will provide mass 

storage of multimedia content . . . .” Id. Other contemporaneous dictionaries demonstrate that a cable head end is 

just one example of a head end system. See, e.g., J.A. 941, 

Novell’s Complete Encyclopedia of Networking 437 (1995) 

(“Head end: In a broadband network, the starting point 

for transmissions to end users. For example, cable network’s broadcast station is a head end.”). At the time of 

the patent’s filing, the ordinary meaning of “head end 

system,” therefore, was not restricted to delivery over a 

conventional TV or cable system.

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 7 Filed: 05/31/2016
8 HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 

Appellees argue that the specification focuses on conventional TV delivery systems, and therefore, the term 

“head end system” should be so limited. While the specification discloses and the figures depict a preferred embodiment in which the invention is used in a conventional 

TV system, the specification does not disclaim or disavow 

the use of a “head end system” with the internet as a 

video-content delivery system. In this respect, the specification does no more than describe preferred embodiments, 

and we have repeatedly “cautioned against limiting the 

claimed invention to preferred embodiments or specific 

examples in the specification.” Williamson v. Citrix 

Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1346–47 (Fed. Cir. 2015)

(quoting Teleflex, 299 F.3d at 1328). As such, the specification should not be used to limit the term “head end 

system.” The district court thus erred in restricting the 

construction of “head end system” to a conventional TV 

system. 

Having determined that “head end system” requires a 

broader construction still leaves open, however, the issue 

ultimately at the center of the parties’ dispute: the scope 

of the invention. Here, the parties and the district court 

have taken the construction of a singular term that does 

not appear in the specification and used that to drive the 

determination of how broadly the invention applies, i.e. 

whether it is limited to conventional TV or could also be 

applied to contexts such as internet video. In this case, 

the dispute regarding the scope of the invention cannot be 

captured in the construed term. Accordingly, while we do 

not construe the term “head end system” to be limited to a 

conventional TV system, this does not necessarily mean 

that the overall scope of the invention should be broader 

in application. Based on the claims, specification, and 

contemporaneous extrinsic evidence, the term “head end 

system” is properly construed as “the origination point in 

a communication system.” We do not address whether 

the claims as properly construed are invalid under the 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 8 Filed: 05/31/2016
HBAC MATCHMAKER MEDIA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. 9

written description or enablement requirements of 35 

U.S.C. § 112. Instead, we leave these issues for the 

parties to properly raise and develop and for the district 

court to decide in the first instance. 

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the district court incorrectly construed the term “head end 

system.” We therefore vacate the stipulated judgments of 

noninfringement of the ’393 patent and remand the case 

for proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

VACATED AND REMANDED. 

Case: 15-1479 Document: 9-2 Page: 9 Filed: 05/31/2016