NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC,

------------------------------------------------

AMAZON.COM, INC., AMAZON WEB SERVICES, 

INC.,

Plaintiffs-Appellees

v.

PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC,

Defendant-Appellant

LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC,

Defendant

------------------------------------------------

PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC,

Plaintiff

v.

TWITCH INTERACTIVE, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2020-1566, 2020-1568, 2020-1569

______________________ 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 1 Filed: 08/12/2021
2 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of California in Nos. 5:18-cv-00767-BLF, 

5:18-cv-05619-BLF, 5:18-md-02834-BLF, Judge Beth Labson Freeman.

______________________ 

Decided: August 12, 2021

______________________ 

STEPHEN UNDERWOOD, Glaser Weil Fink Howard 

Avchen & Shapiro LLP, Los Angeles, CA, argued for PersonalWeb Technologies LLC. Also represented by 

LAWRENCE MILTON HADLEY; WESLEY WARREN MONROE, 

Stubbs Alderton & Markiles LLP, Sherman Oaks, CA. 

 J. DAVID HADDEN, Fenwick & West LLP, Mountain 

View, CA, argued for Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., Twitch Interactive, Inc. Also represented by 

THOMAS FOX, RAVI RAGAVENDRA RANGANATH, SAINA S.

SHAMILOV; TODD RICHARD GREGORIAN, San Francisco, CA.

 ______________________ 

Before LOURIE, PROST*, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

LOURIE, Circuit Judge.

PersonalWeb Technologies LLC (“PersonalWeb”) appeals from a decision of the District Court for the Northern 

District of California granting summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon Web 

Services, Inc., and Twitch Interactive, Inc. (collectively, 

“Amazon”). See In re PersonalWeb Techs., LLC, No. 18-md02834, 2020 WL 6821074 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 3, 2020) 

* Circuit Judge Sharon Prost vacated the position of 

Chief Judge on May 21, 2021.

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 2 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 3

(“Summary Judgment Decision”). For the reasons described below, we affirm. 

BACKGROUND

This is the second appeal in this case involving a multidistrict litigation consolidating cases that PersonalWeb 

brought against more than eighty Amazon customers. Because we previously discussed the background of the technology at issue and the history of the case, see In re 

PersonalWeb Techs. LLC, 961 F.3d 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2020), 

we provide only the following brief summary. 

In January 2018, PersonalWeb filed a series of lawsuits 

asserting that Amazon customers infringe five patents that 

share a common specification and claim priority from the 

same abandoned patent application, which was filed on 

April 11, 1995. See id. at 1369. The patents are generally 

directed to uses of what the inventors termed “True 

Names” for data items. According to the patents, a “True 

Name” is a “‘substantially unique’ identifier for each data 

item that depend[s] only on the content of the data itself,” 

as opposed to “other purportedly less reliable means of 

identifying data items, such as user-provided file names.” 

Id. (citing U.S. Patent 6,928,442).

In the current appeal, only three claims are at issue: 

claim 20 of U.S. Patent 7,802,310 (the “’310 patent”); and 

claims 10–11 of U.S. Patent 6,928,442 (the “’442 patent”). 

Claim 20 of the ’310 patent recites:

20. A computer-implemented method operable 

in a system which includes a plurality of 

computers, the method comprising:

controlling distribution of content from a first 

computer to at least one other computer, in 

response to a request obtained by a first device in the system from a second device in 

the system, the first device comprising 

hardware including at least one processor, 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 3 Filed: 08/12/2021
4 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

the request including at least a content-dependent name of a particular data item, the 

content-dependent name being based at 

least in part on a function of at least some 

of the data comprising the particular data 

item, wherein the function comprises a 

message digest function or a hash function, 

and wherein two identical data items will 

have the same content-dependent name, 

based at least in part on said content-dependent 

name of said particular data item, the first 

device (A) permitting the content to be provided to or accessed by the at least one other 

computer if it is not determined that the 

content is unauthorized or unlicensed, 

otherwise, (B) if it is determined that the 

content is unauthorized or unlicensed, not 

permitting the content to be provided to or 

accessed by the at least one other computer.

’310 patent col. 39 ll. 8–31 (emphasis added). Claims 10 

and 11 of the ’442 patent recite:

10. A method, in a system in which a plurality 

of files are distributed across a plurality of 

computers, the method comprising:

obtaining a name for a data file, the name being 

based at least in part on a given function of 

the data, wherein the data used by the function comprises the contents of the particular file;

determining, using at least the name, whether 

a copy of the data file is present on at least 

one of said computers; and 

determining whether a copy of the data file that 

is present on a at least one of said computers is an unauthorized copy or an unlicensed copy of the data file.

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 4 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 5

11. A method as in claim 10 further comprising:

allowing the file to be provided from one of the

computers having an authorized or licensed copy of the file.

’442 patent col. 41 ll. 13–27 (emphases added). 

Broadly speaking, PersonalWeb’s infringement allegations targeted Amazon’s S3 web host servers and Amazon’s 

CloudFront service. Amazon intervened in the actions 

against its customers and filed a declaratory judgment action against PersonalWeb. See PersonalWeb, 961 F.3d at 

1372. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated the cases in the United States District Court for 

the Northern District of California for pretrial proceedings. 

Id. The court decided to first proceed with Amazon’s declaratory judgment action and PersonalWeb’s case against 

one representative Amazon customer, Twitch Interactive, 

Inc. (“Twitch”).1 Id. The court stayed all other customer 

cases on the basis of PersonalWeb’s representation that it 

would not be able to proceed in the other customer cases if 

it lost its case against Twitch. Id.

Because of a prior lawsuit in 2011 by PersonalWeb alleging infringement by Amazon’s S3 web host servers, the 

district court granted partial summary judgment in favor 

of Amazon based on claim preclusion and the Kessler doctrine, which this court later affirmed. Id. at 1373. The litigation continued in the district court with respect to 

PersonalWeb’s infringement allegations against Amazon’s 

CloudFront servers. Those allegations centered on the 

1 Twitch is an Amazon subsidiary. Although the 

case against Twitch in the district court appears to have 

proceeded in parallel with the case against Amazon, for 

purposes of this appeal the noninfringement issues are 

identical. Therefore, unless otherwise noted, we refer to 

the appellees collectively as “Amazon.”

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 5 Filed: 08/12/2021
6 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

servers’ communication over the Internet using the HyperText Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”), and specifically the 

cache-control functionality in the HTTP 1.1 standard. PersonalWeb alleged that “entity tags” or “ETags” in the headers of HTTP requests and responses are an embodiment of 

the patented True Names. According to PersonalWeb, the 

CloudFront servers infringe the patent claims by using 

ETags to validate whether cached copies of previously

served data items are still usable or whether the data items 

have instead become stale and must be served again by the 

server.

In August 2019, the district court issued a claim construction order, construing ten disputed claim terms. See 

In re PersonalWeb Techs., LLC Patent Litig., N. 18-md02834, 2019 WL 3859023 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 16, 2019) (“Claim 

Construction Opinion”). Most relevant to this appeal, the 

court construed the term “unauthorized or unlicensed” to 

mean “not compliant with a valid license.” Id. at *18. Relatedly, the court construed the term “authorization” to 

mean “a valid license.” Id. The court subsequently denied 

PersonalWeb’s motion to clarify the claim construction order. In re PersonalWeb Techs., LLC, No. 18-md-02834, 

2019 WL 4837185 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 1, 2019).

Based on the district court’s construction of the terms 

“unauthorized or unlicensed” and “authorization,” PersonalWeb conceded that it could not meet its burden of proving 

infringement of any of the patent claims. See In re PersonalWeb Techs., LLC, No. 18-md-02834, 2019 WL 7212318, 

at *1 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 31, 2019). PersonalWeb then moved 

for entry of final judgment of noninfringement based on the 

court’s claim constructions. Id. In view of a pending summary judgment motion that Amazon had already filed, 

which relied on additional noninfringement grounds beyond the court’s claim constructions, the court denied PersonalWeb’s motion. Id. at *2.

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 6 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 7

On February 3, 2020, the district court granted Amazon’s motion for summary judgment. Summary Judgment 

Decision, 2020 WL 6821074. The court considered four separate grounds of noninfringement. First the court granted 

Amazon’s motion on the unopposed ground that Amazon’s 

CloudFront servers do not infringe the asserted claims under the court’s constructions of “unauthorized or unlicensed” and “authorization.” Id. at *7. The court also 

granted Amazon’s motion for summary judgment of noninfringement because the CloudFront servers do not meet 

limitations directed to “permitting” content to be provided 

or accessed, determining whether a copy of a data file “is 

present,” or “comparing” to a plurality of identifiers. Id. at 

*7–14.

PersonalWeb appeals from the district court’s grant of 

summary judgment. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION

We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment according to the law of the regional circuit. Kaneka 

Corp. v. Xiamen Kingdomway Grp. Co., 790 F.3d 1298, 

1303 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (citing Halo Elecs., Inc. v. Pulse Elecs., Inc., 769 F.3d 1371, 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2014)). In the 

Ninth Circuit, summary judgment is reviewed de novo, and 

we thus apply the standard applied by the district court. 

Id. (citing Bos. Scientific Corp. v. Johnson & Johnson, 647 

F.3d 1353, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2011)). “[S]ummary judgment is 

appropriate when, drawing reasonable inferences in favor 

of the non-moving party, there is no genuine issue of material fact.” Id. (citing Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo 

Beach v. City of Redondo Beach, 657 F.3d 936, 942 (9th Cir. 

2011)); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

In this case, PersonalWeb raises four challenges to the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment. The parties 

agree, however, that an affirmance of the district court’s 

construction of the claim term “unauthorized or 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 7 Filed: 08/12/2021
8 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

unlicensed,” would dispose of the appeal in its entirety. See 

Oral Argument at 0:34–1:08; 23:48–24:20 , 

http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=20-

1566_03012021.mp3. We therefore begin with that issue.

Claim construction is an issue of law that we review de 

novo. Nevro Corp. v. Bos. Sci. Corp., 955 F.3d 35, 43 (Fed. 

Cir. 2020) (citing Teva Pharms. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 

574 U.S. 318 (2015)). “The words of a claim are generally 

given their ordinary and customary meaning as understood 

by a person of ordinary skill in the art when read in the 

context of the specification and prosecution history.” 

Thorner v. Sony Computer Entm’t Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 

1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012). It is well established that a patent’s 

written description is “the single best guide to the meaning 

of a disputed term.” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 

1315 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc). 

The district court construed “unauthorized or unlicensed” to mean “not complying with a valid license.” The 

court reached that conclusion because, despite the use of 

the disjunctive connector “or” in the claim term, “the intrinsic record reveals that the patentee used the words ‘authorized’ and ‘licensed’ interchangeably” in the patents. Claim 

Construction Opinion, 2019 WL 3859023, at *5. The court 

concluded that “the specification explicitly equates holding 

a ‘valid license’ with ‘authorization.’” Id. (emphases in 

original).

PersonalWeb’s primary argument on appeal is the 

same as its primary argument before the district court, 

namely, that the court’s construction fails to give meaning 

all of the words in the claim. According to PersonalWeb, 

the court’s construction ignores the disjunctive “or” and 

reads the word “unauthorized” out of the claim. PersonalWeb further argues that the words “unauthorized” and 

“unlicensed” are used differently in the written description 

and the prosecution history, that the patents contain examples of data items that are “unauthorized” but not 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 8 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 9

necessarily “unlicensed,” and that the term “unlicensed” is 

one species of the broader genus “unauthorized.”

Amazon responds that the district court correctly found 

that the patents treat “unauthorized or unlicensed” as a 

single concept that relates to the purpose of the claimed 

invention, which is controlling access to licensed content. 

Amazon points to the mechanism described in the patents 

for prohibiting unauthorized parties from accessing licensed data files, which includes a “license table” that 

stores the name of a “licensee,” defined as the “identity of 

a user authorized to have access” to a data file. See ’310

patent col. 11 ll. 33–44; col. 31 ll. 3–32. Amazon contends 

that, although PersonalWeb has identified some examples 

in the written description involving permitted actions in 

the patented system, the patents do not use the word “authorized” in relation to any of those examples. Additionally, Amazon argues, none of those examples has anything 

to do with whether or not a user is authorized or licensed 

to access content.

We agree with Amazon that the district court’s construction is correct. Beginning in the initial sentences of 

the abstract, the ’310 patent makes clear that an object of 

the patented system is to use content-based identifiers for 

the purpose of controlling access to “licensed” content such 

that only “authorized” users may access it. ’310 patent at 

Abstract (“Access to and delivery of licensed content is 

controlled using content names that were determined 

based on the content. . . . Access to the data item is authorized based at least in part on the name.” (emphases 

added)). The patents’ written description proceeds to describe the invention, interchangeably using the terms “licensed” and “authorized” to refer to the same concept.

For example, in describing a “Track for Licensing Purposes” mechanism, the patents state that “[t]his mechanism ensures that licensed files are not used by 

unauthorized parties.” Id. at col. 31 ll. 4–6 (emphases 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 9 Filed: 08/12/2021
10 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

added); see also id. at col. 31 ll. 9–32 (using both terms to 

describe license enforcement and validation). Additionally, 

when describing the license table that stores information 

about files and the users licensed to access them, the patent first states: 

Each record 150 of the license table 136 records a relationship between a licensable 

data item and the user licensed to have access to it.

Id. at col. 11 ll. 33–35 (emphasis added). Immediately 

thereafter, the patent provides a “description” for the field 

in the license table that contains the “licensee”: 

identity of a user authorized to have access to this object. 

Id. at col. 11 ll. 42–43 (emphasis added). These two sentences describe precisely the same concept, using the 

phrase “licensed to have access” the first time and “authorized to have access” the second time.

PersonalWeb acknowledges that the two words “unauthorized” and “unlicensed” are not mutually exclusive, arguing that “unlicensed” is a subset of the broader term 

“unauthorized.” Under PersonalWeb’s argument, however, 

the scope of the claim term as written—“unauthorized or 

unlicensed”—is exactly the same as the scope would have 

been if the claim term instead said “unauthorized.” Because a major component of PersonalWeb’s challenge is 

that the district court read the first two words—“unauthorized or”—out of the claim term, it must be pointed out that 

PersonalWeb is essentially urging us to instead read the 

last two words—“or unlicensed”—out of the claim term. Of 

course, a claim construction should generally attempt to 

“give meaning to all the words in [the] claims,” Exxon 

Chem. Patents, Inc. v. Lubrizol Corp., 64 F.3d 1553, 1557 

(Fed. Cir. 1995), and avoid “reading out” words from the 

claim. See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Articulate Sys., Inc., 234 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 10 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 11

F.3d 14, 24–25 (Fed. Cir. 2000). “The preference for giving 

meaning to all terms, however, is not an inflexible rule that 

supersedes all other principles of claim construction.” SimpleAir, Inc. v. Sony Ericsson Mobile Commc’ns AB, 820 

F.3d 419, 429 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (citing Power Mosfet Techs., 

L.L.C. v. Siemens AG, 378 F.3d 1396, 1410 (Fed. Cir. 

2005)). Here, as the parties appear to agree that there is 

significant overlap between the words “unauthorized” and 

“unlicensed” as used in the patents, we agree with the district court’s analysis which focused on the patentee’s consistent interchangeable use of the two words

“unauthorized” and “unlicensed” in the intrinsic record. 

See Baran v. Medical Device Techs., Inc., 616 F.3d 1309, 

1316 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (holding that although the use of different terms usually implies that they have different meanings, “that implication is overcome where . . . the evidence 

indicates that the patentee used the two terms interchangeably”).

For similar reasons, we do not agree with PersonalWeb’s argument regarding the claim’s use of the disjunctive connector “or.” If, as PersonalWeb argues, the word 

“unlicensed” were a species of the genus “unauthorized,” 

then the word “or” between those two words in the claim 

term would be nonsensical. We thus agree with Amazon 

that the disjunctive “or” in the claim is being used to connect two words that are synonyms or equivalents of each 

other in the patent. To be sure, neither party cites a case 

in which this court has held the word “or” in a patent claim 

to be a connector for synonyms. But the Supreme Court 

has held in the context of statutory construction that “or” 

can be used to connect synonyms, see Hawaiian Airlines, 

Inc. v. Norris, 512 U.S. 246, 255 (1994), and we have recognized that “many of the canons of statutory construction 

apply equally when interpreting patent claims.” PPC 

Broadband, Inc. v. Corning Optical Commc’ns RF, LLC, 

815 F.3d 747, 752–53 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 11 Filed: 08/12/2021
12 IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC

We also find, as the district court did, that PersonalWeb lacks support in the intrinsic evidence for its argument that the patents contemplate other types of 

“authorization” that are unrelated to license status. See 

Claim Construction Opinion, 2019 WL 3859023, at *6. Amazon correctly points out that, although PersonalWeb has 

identified individual examples of actions that may or may 

not be permitted in the patented system based on settings 

associated with data items (e.g., read-only, lock flag), none 

of those examples has anything to do with controlling access to licensed or authorized content. And contrary to PersonalWeb’s assertion that it “does not matter” that the 

“specification does not use the exact word ‘authorization’ to 

describe those examples,” see Appellant’s Br. 43, the absence of the word “authorization” from those examples 

matters a great deal because the entire issue in dispute is 

the construction of a term that includes the word “unauthorized” based on the repeated use of the exact word “authorized” in the context of licensed content. If we were to 

infer, as PersonalWeb asks us to do, that the patent implicitly sets forth other types of authorization without using 

that word, we would simply be rewriting the patent specification. 

Finally, we are not persuaded by PersonalWeb’s argument about claim differentiation and the prosecution history. PersonalWeb suggests that because some claims in 

the True Name patent family use the term “unauthorized 

or unlicensed,” others use the term “unauthorized,” and 

others use the term “unlicensed,” we should interpret those 

phrases to have different meanings. PersonalWeb points 

to an example in the prosecution history in which the patentee amended a claim from “unauthorized or unlicensed” 

to “unauthorized” as evidence that the patentee understood 

the two terms to have different scope. See J.A. 3409–10. 

But, again, according to the genus/species argument that 

PersonalWeb is advancing in this appeal, a claim that recites “unauthorized or unlicensed” would actually have the 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 12 Filed: 08/12/2021
IN RE: PERSONALWEB TECHNOLOGIES LLC 13

same scope—i.e., not different scope—as a claim that 

merely says “unauthorized.” Moreover, under PersonalWeb’s argument, the identified claim amendment would 

have had no substantive effect on the scope of the amended 

claim. Thus, PersonalWeb’s selectively applied claim differentiation argument is self-defeating, and we will not prioritize unclear portions of the prosecution history over the 

clarity with which the terms “authorized” and “licensed” 

are used interchangeably in the written description. See 

Phillips, 414 F.3d at 1317 (“[B]ecause the prosecution history represents an ongoing negotiation between the PTO 

and the applicant, rather than the final product of that negotiation, it often lacks the clarity of the specification and 

thus is less useful for claim construction purposes.”). 

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the district 

court correctly construed the term “unauthorized or unlicensed” to mean “not complying with a valid license.” Under that claim construction, PersonalWeb has conceded 

that it cannot meet its burden of proving that Amazon infringes any patent claims in the True Name patent family. 

Because the claim construction issue is dispositive of the 

entire appeal, we need not reach any of the other issues in 

this case. Accordingly, we hold that the district court correctly granted summary judgment in favor of Amazon.

CONCLUSION

We have considered PersonalWeb’s remaining arguments but we find them unpersuasive. The judgment of 

the district court is affirmed. 

AFFIRMED 

Case: 20-1566 Document: 65 Page: 13 Filed: 08/12/2021