NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

VOCALIFE LLC,

Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant

v.

AMAZON.COM, INC., AMAZON.COM LLC,

Defendants-Appellants

______________________ 

2021-1937, 2021-1984

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Texas in No. 2:19-cv-00123-JRG, Chief 

Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap.

______________________ 

Decided: July 28, 2022

______________________ 

ALFRED ROSS FABRICANT, Fabricant LLP, Rye, NY, argued for plaintiff-cross-appellant. Also represented by 

ENRIQUE WILLIAM ITURRALDE, PETER LAMBRIANAKOS,

VINCENT J. RUBINO, III. 

 JOSEPH R. RE, Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP, 

Irvine, CA, argued for defendants-appellants. Also represented by ALAN GRAYSON LAQUER; COLIN B. HEIDEMAN, Seattle, WA.

______________________ 

Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 1 Filed: 07/28/2022
2 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 

Before MOORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit 

Judges.

HUGHES, Circuit Judge. 

Defendants-Appellants Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon.com LLC appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Texas’ denial of Amazon’s motion 

for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of noninfringement. Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant Vocalife LLC cross-appeals two of the district court’s summary judgment grants. 

Because there is no substantial evidence to support infringement of the “plurality of configurations” limitation, 

we reverse the district court’s denial of Amazon’s motion 

for judgment as a matter of law, vacate the jury verdict, 

and dismiss Vocalife’s cross-appeal as moot. 

I 

Vocalife owns U.S. Patent No. RE 47,049, which is directed to methods and systems for “enhancing acoustics of 

a target sound signal received from a target sound source, 

while suppressing ambient noise signals.” ’049 patent, 

2:6–8. Claim 1 of the ’049 patent covers one such method 

and recites a number of steps, including “providing a microphone array system comprising an array of sound sensors positioned in a linear, circular, or other configuration” 

and “determining a delay . . . wherein said determination 

of said delay enables beamforming for said array of sound 

sensors in a plurality of configurations.”1 Id., 21:27–22:3 

(claim 1). We refer to the latter step as the “plurality of configurations” limitation. 

1 “Beamforming” refers to a signal processing technique by which the disclosed microphone array can focus 

on a sound signal coming from a particular direction instead of sound signals from other directions. See ’049 patent, 5:65–6:2, 6:17–23. 

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VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 3

Vocalife filed a patent infringement suit against Amazon, accusing certain Amazon Echo products of infringing 

the ’049 patent. At the summary judgment stage, the district court granted summary judgment that, among other 

things, absolute intervening rights under 35 U.S.C. § 252 

apply to certain Echo products and Vocalife was not entitled to damages for pre-suit induced infringement. The 

case proceeded to trial. Amazon moved for judgment as a 

matter of law (JMOL) of noninfringement after the close of 

evidence. The district court denied JMOL of no induced infringement but granted JMOL of no direct or contributory 

infringement by Amazon and no infringement under the 

doctrine of equivalents. Thus, the only infringement issue 

for the jury to decide was whether Amazon induced users 

of the Echo to literally infringe the patent. After the six-day 

trial concluded, the jury returned a verdict finding that 

Amazon did. Amazon renewed its motion for JMOL of no 

induced infringement, which the district court again denied. 

Both parties appeal. Amazon appeals the denial of its 

JMOL motion. Vocalife cross-appeals the two summary 

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

§ 1295(a)(1).

II 

We review JMOL denials under the law of the regional 

circuit, here the Fifth Circuit, which reviews such denials

de novo. Raytheon Co. v. Indigo Sys. Corp., 895 F.3d 1333, 

1338 (Fed. Cir. 2018). JMOL “is appropriate only where 

‘the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of one party that the court concludes that 

reasonable jurors could not arrive at a contrary verdict.’” 

Id. (quoting Orion IP, LLC v. Hyundai Motor Am., 605 F.3d 

967, 973 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit law)).

Thus, “[w]e affirm a district court’s denial of [JMOL] when 

there was substantial evidence to support the jury’s verdict.” Id. (citing Power-One, Inc. v. Artesyn Techs., Inc., 

Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 3 Filed: 07/28/2022
4 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 

599 F.3d 1343, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit 

law)). 

III 

Vocalife contends it provided substantial evidence that 

the Echo infringes the “plurality of configurations” limitation. At trial, Vocalife’s expert, Joseph McAlexander, testified that the Echo determines a delay as part of its

beamforming process using inputs from the incoming target sound signal in conjunction with certain information—beam coefficients—stored on the device. See, e.g., 

Appx6326–27 at 617:19–618:3; Appx6340–42 at 

631:2–633:19; Appx6427–28 at 718:10–719:22; Appx6429 

at 720:10–17. As Mr. McAlexander testified, Amazon calculated the pre-loaded beam coefficients via computer simulation during development of the Echo and pre-loaded 

those coefficients onto the Echo devices during manufacturing. See, e.g., Appx6326–27 at 617:3–618:3; 

Appx6390–91 at 681:24–682:7. Mr. McAlexander further 

testified that the Echo’s delay determination enables 

beamforming for a plurality of configurations because the 

software code running on the Echo can be utilized across 

different Echo products with different microphone array 

configurations. See, e.g., Appx6297–98 at 588:21–589:14; 

Appx6339–40 at 630:20–631:1. 

None of this testimony, however, supports the conclusion that the Echo products infringe the ’049 patent. The 

testimony does not show that the delay determination occurring on a given Echo device enables beamforming for a 

plurality of configurations, as claim 1 requires. If anything, 

Mr. McAlexander’s testimony suggests that this determination enables beamforming for only the specific microphone array configuration on that specific device.2

2 At oral argument, Vocalife hypothesized that 

“there could be” multiple configurations on a given Echo 

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VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 5

Mr. McAlexander repeatedly described the pre-loaded 

beam coefficients as being specific to a “particular” microphone array. See, e.g., Appx6325–26 at 616:14–617:2 (Amazon’s computer simulation is “a construct by which they 

take the instantiation of a particular microphone array organized in a certain fashion, arranged in a certain architecture” to create beam coefficients “that are associated 

with [ ] that particular kind of a structure.”); Appx6326 at 

617:7–18 (Amazon “take[s] a specific designed architecture 

with a physical arrangement of the microphones” to provide the beam coefficients, which “go[] into the [ ] initial 

construct of how the beams will be formed once they are 

instantiated in the accused device.”); Appx6327 at 

618:6–11 (The beam coefficients “include the understanding of how that arrangement of the architecture is,” as “you 

have to define the microphone array first.”); Appx6437 at 

728:8–14 (Amazon determines the beam coefficients “based 

on an architectural arrangement or a layout of the sound 

sensors” and “that calculation is already built into the coefficients that are then programmed into this device.”).

While it is undisputed that Amazon pre-loads certain beam 

coefficients onto each Echo device, Vocalife provides no evidence showing that the coefficients loaded onto a given 

Echo device enable beamforming for a variety of microphone configurations, as opposed to only the configuration 

device “in the situations where not all of the microphones 

are operating or certain microphones aren’t receiving the 

sound or performing as designed.” Oral Argument at 

20:00–20:09, https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=21-1937_07072022.mp3. This contention, 

which appears nowhere in Vocalife’s briefing, comes too 

late. See Henry v. Dep’t of Justice, 157 F.3d 863, 865 (Fed. 

Cir. 1998) (declining to consider argument raised for the 

first time at oral argument). In any event, Vocalife cites no

evidence—nor have we found any—showing that these hypothetical configurations exist.

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6 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 

of that particular device. Mr. McAlexander’s conclusory, 

unsupported testimony that the Echo meets the “plurality 

of configurations” limitation, see Appx6338 at 629:2–14, is 

otherwise insufficient to support the jury’s infringement 

verdict, see, e.g., Yoon Ja Kim v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 

465 F.3d 1312, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (affirming JMOL of 

noninfringement where patentee’s expert offered only conclusory, unsupported testimony). 

Because there is no substantial evidence showing that 

any delay determination occurring on a given Echo device 

enables beamforming for a microphone array “in a plurality 

of configurations,” we conclude that Vocalife failed as a 

matter of law to prove that the Echo infringes claim 1 of 

the ’049 patent. We reverse the district court’s denial of 

JMOL of no induced infringement and vacate the jury verdict. This moots Vocalife’s cross-appeal, and we accordingly 

dismiss as moot Appeal No. 2021-1984. 

REVERSED IN PART, DISMISSED IN PART

Costs to Defendants-Appellants.

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