Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01481/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01481-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Intel Corporation
Appellee
NorthPeak Wireless, LLC
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

3COM CORPORATION, HEWLETT-PACKARD 

COMPANY, D-LINK SYSTEMS, INC., FUJITSU 

AMERICA, INC., GATEWAY, INC., ACER AMERICA 

CORPORATION, ASUS COMPUTER 

INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION, BELKIN 

INTERNATIONAL, INC., U.S. ROBOTICS 

CORPORATION, BUFFALO TECHNOLOGY (USA), 

INC., BUFFALO AMERICAS, INC., DELL, INC., 

SONICWALL, INC., NETGEAR, INC., SMC 

NETWORKS, INC., SONY ELECTRONICS, INC., 

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AMERICA 

LLC, TOSHIBA AMERICA INFORMATION 

SYSTEMS, INC., TRENDNET SYSTEMS, INC., 

TRENDWARE INTERNATIONAL, INC., ZONET USA

CORPORATION, VIEWSONIC CORPORATION, 

ZYXEL COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees

INTEL CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2016-1477, 2016-1481

______________________ 

Case: 16-1481 Document: 6-2 Page: 1 Filed: 12/28/2016
2 NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of California in Nos. 3:09-cv-00602-SI, 

3:15-cv-05273-SI, Judge Susan Y. Illston.

______________________ 

Decided: December 28, 2016

______________________ 

CHRISTIAN JOHN HURT, Nix Patterson & Roach LLP, 

Dallas, TX, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by DEREK TOD GILLILAND, Daingerfield, TX.

CHAD S. CAMPBELL, Perkins Coie LLP, Phoenix, AZ, 

argued for all defendants-appellees. Defendant-appellee 

Intel Corporation also represented by TYLER R. BOWEN, 

AARON MATZ; DAN L. BAGATELL, Hanover, NH; NANCY 

CHENG, Palo Alto, CA.

DAVID JACK LEVY, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, 

Houston, TX, for defendants-appellees 3COM Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company. Also represented by 

THOMAS R. DAVIS. 

DUNCAN PALMATIER, Law Offices of S.J. Christine 

Yang, Fountain Valley, CA, for defendants-appellees DLink Systems, Inc., ZyXEL Communications, Inc. Also 

represented by VICTORIA D. HAO, CHRISTINE H. YANG. 

RUDOLPH KIM, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Palo Alto, 

CA, for defendant-appellee Fujitsu America, Inc. Also 

represented by DANIEL CLAYTON HUBIN. 

MICHAEL CHAOCHA TING, TechKnowledge Law Group 

LLP, Redwood City, CA, for defendants-appellees Gateway, Inc., Acer America Corporation. 

ALFREDO A. BISMONTE, Beck, Ross, Bismonte & Finley 

LLP, San Jose, CA, for defendant-appellee ASUS ComCase: 16-1481 Document: 6-2 Page: 2 Filed: 12/28/2016
NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION 3

puter International Corporation. Also represented by 

JEREMY DUGGAN. 

RYAN KEN YAGURA, O'Melveny & Myers LLP, Los Angeles, CA, for defendant-appellee Belkin International, 

Inc. Also represented by JOHN KEVIN MURRAY, VISION 

WINTER. 

DAVID SPENCER BLOCH, Winston & Strawn LLP, San 

Francisco, CA, for defendant-appellee U.S. Robotics 

Corporation. Also represented by DAVID P. ENZMINGER, 

Menlo Park, CA.

RUSSELL W. FAEGENBURG, Lerner, David, Littenberg, 

Krumholz & Mentlik LLP, Westfield, NJ, for defendantsappellees Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc., Buffalo Americas, Inc.

JOHN D. HAYNES, Alston & Bird LLP, Atlanta, GA, for 

defendants-appellees Dell, Inc., Sonicwall, Inc. Also 

represented by NICHOLAS TANG TSUI; BRADY COX, Dallas, 

TX; RYAN W. KOPPELMAN, East Palo Alto, CA.

RYAN R. SMITH, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, 

PC, Palo Alto, CA, for defendant-appellee Netgear, Inc.

RICHARD C. VASQUEZ, Vasquez Benisek & Lindgren, 

LLP, Lafayette, CA, for defendant-appellee SMC Networks, Inc. Also represented by ERIC W. BENISEK, 

JEFFREY T. LINDGREN, ROBERT MCARTHUR, STEPHEN C.

STEINBERG. 

LIONEL M. LAVENUE, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, 

Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Reston, VA, for defendantsappellees Sony Electronics, Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC. Also represented by DANIEL 

CRAIG COOLEY; KARA A. SPECHT, Atlanta, GA. 

Case: 16-1481 Document: 6-2 Page: 3 Filed: 12/28/2016
4 NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION

JOHN JOSEPH FELDHAUS, Foley & Lardner LLP, Washington, DC, for defendant-appellee Toshiba America 

Information Systems, Inc. Also represented by PAVAN 

KUMAR AGARWAL. 

JEN-FENG LEE, LT Pacific Law Group LLP, City Of 

Industry, CA, for defendants-appellees Trendnet Systems, 

Inc., Trendware International, Inc., Zonet USA Corporation.

DANA M. HERBERHOLZ, Parsons Behle & Latimer, Boise, ID, for defendant-appellee Viewsonic Corporation. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, CLEVENGER, and CHEN,

Circuit Judges.

CLEVENGER, Circuit Judge. 

In November 2008, Plaintiff NorthPeak Wireless, LLC 

(“NorthPeak”) asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 4,977,577 (“the 

’577 patent) and 5,987,058 (“the ’058 patent”) against a 

number of accused infringers who market wireless communication products supporting IEEE 802.11 (commonly 

referred to as “WiFi”). Among the accused infringers were 

many customers using chips designed by Intel Corporation (“Intel”), who moved successfully to intervene in the 

litigation in March 2009. 

In September 2009, during the pendency of the district court litigation, Intel filed its first ex parte reexamination request for both the ’577 and ’058 patents. The 

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (“PTO”) found the claims 

of the ’058 patent unpatentable but upheld the patentability of the ’577 patent claims. Intel filed a second ex parte

reexamination request for the ’577 patent in August 2013, 

and the PTO again upheld the challenged claims’ patentability. As such, the ’577 patent claims remained in play 

at the district court.

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NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION 5

On August 28, 2015, the district court issued its order 

construing the disputed claims terms for the ’577 patent. 

Northpeak Wireless, LLC v. 3Com Corp., No. 09-CV00602-SI, 2015 WL 5117020 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 28, 2015)

(“Claim Construction Order”). Following the district 

court’s order, NorthPeak entered into separate stipulations of non-infringement with the two groups of accused 

infringers—Intel, along with the accused infringers using 

Intel chips, and those not using Intel chips. The substance of both stipulations is essentially the same: under 

the district court’s constructions of several terms, NorthPeak could not prove infringement of the asserted claims 

of the ’577 patent. The district court entered final judgment of non-infringement as to both groups of accused 

infringers (now, collectively, “the Appellees”). 

NorthPeak appeals the district court’s constructions of 

four claim terms/groupings: (1) “register”; (2) “[preamble/address/data] register”; (3) “storing/stored”; and (4) 

three related means-plus-function terms. Pursuant to the 

parties’ stipulations—and as confirmed during oral argument—if we affirm any one of the district court’s constructions for “register,” “[preamble/address/data] 

register,” or “storing/stored,” we must also affirm the 

judgments of non-infringement. 

For the following reasons, we affirm. 

I 

The ’577 patent relates to “a wireless warning system 

for use in a large office building, and more particularly a 

wireless fire warning and detection system which employs 

spread spectrum technology with high reliability for 

continuously monitoring the building.” ’577 patent col. 1

ll. 5–9. “Spread spectrum” technology, in essence, allows 

for improved radiofrequency (“RF”) signal transmission 

between remote locations by transforming or “spreading” 

the transmitted data over a broader range of RF frequencies. A broader signal better resists interference and 

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6 NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION

interception. When the spread signal arrives at its intended location, the receiver “despreads” the signal to 

recover the original data. The ’577 patent is not directed 

specifically to the concept of using spread spectrum technology, but describes an application of the technology for 

security systems in large buildings.

In general, as described in the specification, decentralized sensors (capable of detecting fire, smoke, unauthorized access, etc.) are located throughout a given

space—e.g., in different rooms of an office building. These 

sensors are coupled to spread spectrum transmitters, 

which send data to one or more spread spectrum receivers. The receivers communicate with a centralized computer, which can display the data to the user. 

More specifically, the sensor data are passed to the 

transmitters to be sent out as part of a “packet,” comprising three components: (1) a preamble, (2) an address, and 

(3) the actual sensor data. The preamble acts to synchronize the transmitter with the receiver (or tell the receiver 

to turn on so that it can receive the signal). The address 

identifies which transmitter is sending the data packet. 

The data detail whatever condition the sensor may have 

detected (e.g., heat or smoke). The three components are

initially stored in “registers” in the transmitter as series 

of binary “bits”— “0”s or “1”s. These bits comprise the 

base information to be sent. The transmitter converts 

each of these bit components into broader “chips”—the 

spread out signal—by applying a “chip code.” The transmitter broadcasts the spread chip signal to the receiver. 

The receiver contains an identical chip code that it uses to 

“despread” the chip signal to recover the original bit data.

NorthPeak’s asserted claims—claims 9, 12, 13, and 

14—are largely directed to the circuitry of the transmitters that effects the spreading transformation. 

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II

“The ultimate construction of the claim is a legal 

question and, therefore, is reviewed de novo.” Info-Hold, 

Inc. v. Applied Media Techs. Corp., 783 F.3d 1262, 1265 

(Fed. Cir. 2015); see also Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. 

Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 831, 841 (2015) (“[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.”).

We begin with the parties’ dispute regarding the term 

“register.” The district court, adopting a dictionary definition cited by NorthPeak during the second ex parte reexamination, construed “register” to mean “a small, named 

region of high speed memory located within a microprocessor or any electronic device capable of storing binary 

data. A register is usually large enough to hold only a few 

bytes of information and is referenced in programs by a 

name, rather than an address.” Claim Construction 

Order at *5–6. Agreeing in large part with the Appellees’ 

arguments, the district court explained that this supporting dictionary definition—rather than the actual construction NorthPeak proposed during reexamination—

was necessary to capture NorthPeak’s arguments distinguishing certain types of memory found in the prior art. 

The district court, however, declined Appellees’ proposal 

to identify and exclude the specific prior art memory types 

in the formal construction, i.e., “regular memory,” random 

access memory (“RAM”), or memory buffers. Claim 

Construction Order at *6 (“[D]efining a term by a nonexhaustive list of the things that it is not, is [a] clumsy 

and imprecise solution.”).

NorthPeak argues that the district court misunderstood the reexamination statements made to the PTO. 

According to NorthPeak, the prior art references failed to

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8 NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION

teach “registers,” not because they relied on “regular

memory,” but, rather, because these references lacked 

“designated or specific regions of memory,” a defining 

characteristic of registers. Indeed, NorthPeak emphasizes that its proposed construction of “register” in this 

litigation is the same as that which it proposed to the 

PTO during the second ex parte reexamination, and which 

the PTO ultimately adopted: “a designated or specific 

region of memory in a computer processor.” NorthPeak 

further argues that its prosecution history statements

were not unequivocal disavowals, such that they constituted a disclaimer of the full scope of the plain and ordinary meaning of “register.” See Omega Eng’g, Inc, v. 

Raytek Corp., 334 F.3d 1314, 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2003)

(“[W]here the patentee has unequivocally disavowed a 

certain meaning to obtain his patent, the doctrine of 

prosecution disclaimer attaches and narrows the ordinary 

meaning of the claim congruent with the scope of the 

surrender.”).

Starting with this last point, we note that, although 

the district court primarily relied on prosecution disclaimer in reaching its construction, this case does not 

require invoking the prosecution disclaimer doctrine. It is 

well established that we are to give claim terms their 

“ordinary and customary meaning,” with reference to the 

intrinsic evidence, including the prosecution history.1 See 

Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1313, 1317 (Fed. 

Cir. 2005). Although consulting the prosecution history

often serves to identify ways in which the inventor may 

have narrowed a claim’s definition in order to obtain 

 

1 Statements made during reexamination procedures before the PTO are part of the prosecution history. 

See Krippelz v. Ford Motor Co., 667 F.3d 1261, 1266 (Fed.

Cir. 2012) (citing Am. Piledriving Equip., Inc. v. Geoquip, 

Inc., 637 F.3d 1324, 1336 (Fed.Cir.2011).

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NORTHPEAK WIRELESS, LLC v. 3COM CORPORATION 9

allowance, it may also simply “inform the meaning of the 

claim language by demonstrating how the inventor understood the invention.” See id. at 1317; see also Shire 

Dev., LLC v. Watson Pharm., Inc., 787 F.3d 1359, 1366 

(Fed. Cir. 2015) (explaining that prosecution history 

statements “do inform the claim construction,” even when 

they “do not rise to the level of unmistakable disavowal”). 

In this case, contrary to NorthPeak’s unsubstantiated 

assertions, there is no hint in the term “register” itself 

that would suggest the plain and ordinary meaning 

necessarily encompasses types of regular memory such as 

RAM or buffers. Therefore, we are not faced with the 

question of whether NorthPeak unambiguously disclaimed the full scope of the term during reexamination. 

Rather, the only intrinsic evidence informing the plain 

and ordinary meaning of register comes from the prosecution history—including the definition NorthPeak itself 

provided during reexamination:

The term “register” should be construed as “a designated or specific region of memory in a computer 

processor.” This construction is consistent with 

the plain and customary meaning to one of ordinary skill in the art. See, e.g., COMPUTER 

DICTIONARY at 334, Microsoft Press (2d. Ed. 1994) 

(defining “register” as “[a] small named region of 

high-speed memory located within a microprocessor or any electronic device capable of storing binary data. A register is usually large enough to 

hold only a few bytes of information and is referenced in programs by a name such as AX or SF. It 

is used as a holding area for specific, sometimes 

critical, pieces of data or information related to activities going on within the system. For example,

a register might be used to hold the results of an 

addition operation or to hold the address of a particular location in the computer’s memory.”) 

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Joint Appendix at 685. NorthPeak focuses exclusively on 

the text of the proposed construction, distancing itself 

from the actual definition it originally cited for support. 

Clearly, however, at the time of the reexamination, 

NorthPeak viewed the two statements as saying essentially the same thing, or at least as being “consistent.” 

Moreover, as the district court correctly determined, 

NorthPeak’s additional statements during the second 

reexamination conclusively establish that the dictionary 

definition better conveys the inventors’ understanding of 

the plain and customary meaning of “register.” NorthPeak specifically addressed the term “register” in distinguishing the claimed invention from two prior art 

publications: Kahn and Dickson. Because Kahn and 

Dickson described systems where information was stored 

in and outputted from regular memory, NorthPeak argued they did not contain registers as found in the claims 

of the ’577 patent. We disagree with NorthPeak that the

statements merely went to whether the memory in the 

prior art was “designated or specific.” The focus of the 

reexamination statements was plainly on distinguishing 

“registers” from regular memory. The Examiner confirmed this understanding in an interview summary:

[T]he term “register” has been explained to have a 

specific meaning which allegedly has not been 

taught by Dickson and Kahn. This term is commonly defined as “a small, named region of highspeed memory located within a microprocessor or 

any electronic device capable of storing binary data” (Computer Dictionary at 331, Microsoft Press 

(2nd edition 1994)). Accordingly [NorthPeak’s attorney] submitted that register cannot be any type 

of memory, hence storing information such as preamble or address in a regular memory would not 

anticipate claimed invention.

Joint Appendix at 934 (emphasis added).

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The intrinsic evidence fully supports the district 

court’s construction as representing the plain and customary meaning of the term “register.” Even assuming 

the full scope of the plain meaning of “register” were 

broader than that which we assign, we would, like the 

district court, find that NorthPeak unambiguously disclaimed a broader scope during reexamination. The 

proper construction of “register” is: “a small, named 

region of high speed memory located within a microprocessor or any electronic device capable of storing binary 

data. A register is usually large enough to hold only a few 

bytes of information and is referenced in programs by a 

name, rather than an address.”

As stated above, because we affirm the district court’s 

construction of “register,” we need not address the remaining claim terms. The judgment of the district court 

is affirmed. 

AFFIRMED

COSTS

No Costs. 

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