United States District Court

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

JUDGMENT RE: INFRINGEMENT 

No. C-05-01668 RMW; 05-01766 RMW

United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

E-FILED on 06/18/09

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE DIVISION

COMPUTER CACHE COHERENCY

CORPORATION,

Plaintiff,

v.

VIA TECHNOLOGIES, INC. and VIA

TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (USA),

Defendants.

No. C-05-01668 RMW

COMPUTER CACHE COHERENCY

CORPORATION,

Plaintiff,

v.

INTEL CORPORATION,

Defendant.

No. C-05-01766 RMW

ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION

FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON

CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

JUDGMENT RE: INFRINGEMENT

On September 19, 2008 this court issued an order on the parties' cross-motions for summary

judgment. In that order the court granted Intel Corporation ("Intel") and Via Technologies, Inc's

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

JUDGMENT RE: INFRINGEMENT 

No. C-05-01668 RMW; 05-01766 RMW

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("Via") motions for summary judgment of non-infringement, both for literal infringement and

infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. Computer Cache Coherency Corporation ("CCCC")

now moves to reconsider that order. For the reasons stated below, the court denies the motion for

reconsideration.

CCCC provides two arguments in support of reconsidering the court's grant of summary

judgment of non-infringement. First, CCCC contends that the court misapplied Athletic

Alternatives, Inc. v. Prince Mfg., Inc., 73 F.3d 1573 (Fed. Cir. 1996). And second, CCCC argues

that the court effectively changed its construction of the "SNOOP signal telling" limitation and, as a

result, CCCC had an insufficient opportunity to offer evidence that would have raised a genuine

issue of material fact as to infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. 

I. Citation of Athletic Alternatives

At claim construction, the court construed the term "SNOOP signal" as "a signal indicating

whether an address references a cached data storage location." Claim Construction Order at 10:9-

11:17. The parties then disputed the meaning of the phrase "cached data storage location" at

summary judgment. According to Intel and VIA, the court's use of "cached data storage location"

meant that the SNOOP signal must indicate that data is in fact cached at the referenced location. 

Summary Judgment Order 13:17-19. CCCC contended that the SNOOP signal indicated only

whether a particular address was subject to caching (in other words, whether the address was

"cacheable"). Id. at 13:19-22 The court concluded that the language of claim 1 "strongly indicates

that the SNOOP signal understands which addresses are in cache" (id. at 18:15 9-20), and, therefore,

that "the SNOOP signal is only asserted by the interface device when an address maps to an address

on the second bus at which data is known to be cached" (id. at 18:27-28). After reaching that

conclusion, the court wrote, "[f]urther, if after the reasoned analysis set forth above, both [CCCC's

and defendants'] interpretations are equally plausible, the patentee's statutory burden to distinctly

claim subject matter favors the narrower construction." Id. at 19:6-9 (citing Athletic Alternatives,

Inc. v. Prince Mfg., Inc., 73 F.3d 1573, 1581 (Fed. Cir. 1996)). 

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

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In its motion for reconsideration CCCC contends that the court misapplied Athletic

Alternatives and argues that the case does not stand generally for the proposition that the narrower of

two equally plausible constructions should be adopted. According to CCCC, Athletic Alternatives

held only that a narrower enabled construction should be selected over a broader non-enabled one.

Before considering whether the court correctly cited to the principle of Athletic Alternatives,

it must be recognized that the court did not base its claim construction on any purported rule or

principle from Athletic Alternatives. Rather, it based its construction on the intrinsic evidence

including the abstract and, most importantly, the claim language itself. 

Only after explaining the basis for its construction, did the court suggest that if after a

reasoned analysis CCCC's and defendants' proposed claim constructions were equally plausible, the

defendants' narrower construction should be favored because of the inventor's statutory burden to

distinctly claim the subject matter which he or she regarded as the claimed invention. The court

followed this proposition by "[s]ee Athletic Alternatives, Inc. v. Prince Mfg.,Inc., 73 F.3d 1573,

1581 (Fed. Cir. 1996). "'See' is used . . .when the proposition is not directly stated by the cited

authority but obviously follows from it: there is an inferential step between the authority cited and

the proposition that it supports." THE BLUEBOOK, A Uniform System of Citation (Seventeenth

Edition 2000) at 22-23. CCCC contends that Athletic Alternatives does not hold either directly or

inferentially what it was cited for.

Courts have read Athletic Alternatives to require adoption of only a narrower enabled

construction over a broader non-enabled one. See Digital Biometrics, Inc. v. Identix, Inc., 149 F.3d

1335, 1344 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. v. U.S. Surgical Corp., 93 F.3d 1572, 1581

(Fed. Cir. 1996). As these cases note, Athletic Alternatives relies on the requirement in 35 U.S.C. §

112 that a patentee "distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the applicant regards as his

invention." Athletic Alternatives, 73 F.3d at 1581. In light of this requirement, adopting a broader,

non-enabled construction would "undermine the fair notice function of the requirement that the

patentee distinctly claim the subject matter disclosed in the patent from which he can exclude others

temporarily." Id. Because narrower constructions are not intrinsically more definite (a broad claim

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

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can be as distinctly described as a narrow one), Athletic Alternatives may not have application to the

present case and arguably should not have been cited even following the signal "see" because the

claim as construed may not be enabled. The specification does not disclose how the interface device

would know that an address has been cached. Nevertheless, as noted above, the court's construction

was not dependent, or even based, on Athletic Alternatives. 

II. Doctrine of Equivalents

CCCC argues that this court should reconsider its summary judgment order because CCCC

did not have an opportunity, prior to that order, to provide "particularized testimony" supporting

infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. CCCC's Mot. for Reconsideration 3. At claim

construction, the court construed "the SNOOP signal telling one of said second plurality of bus

masters when to write cached data to the address appearing on the bus" as "the SNOOP signal

indicating to one of the bus masters on the second bus when to write cached data to the one of the

second data storage locations at the address appearing on the second bus." Summ. J. Order 23

(emphasis added). The summary judgment order then states that "[t]his construction requires the

SNOOP signal to indicate to a device on the second bus that it should write data held in that device's

cache memory to main memory on the second bus." Id. (emphasis added). It is this change, from

using the phrase "when to," to using the word "should" which CCCC contends it could not have

anticipated, and which deprives it of due process. CCCC's Mot. for Reconsideration 3. However,

the use of "should" does not meaningfully change the construction. CCCC does not explain how

this minor difference changes the substance of the court's claim construction. Indeed, Intel and Via

argue in their motions opposing reconsideration that it does not. See Intel's Opposition to

Reconsideration 7; Via's Opposition to Mot. for Reconsideration 8. CCCC does not respond in its

reply. The court does not believe that CCCC was deprived of an opportunity to present evidence in

support of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. 

/ / /

/ / /

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

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III. ORDER

For the reasons stated above, the court denies CCCC's motion for reconsideration.

DATED: 06/18/09

RONALD M. WHYTE

United States District Judge

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ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY

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Notice of this document has been electronically sent to:

Counsel for Plaintiff:

Roderick G. Dorman dormanr@hbdlawyers.com

Lawrence M. Hadley hadleyl@hbdlawyers.com

Omer Salik saliko@hbdlawyers.com

Counsel for Defendants:

James P. Bennett jbennett@mofo.com

Juanita R. Brooks brooks@fr.com

Joseph V Colaianni , Jr Colaianni@fr.com

Paul Forrest Coyne pcoyne@mofo.com

John Michael Farrell jfarrell@fr.com

Karl J. Kramer kkramer@mofo.com

Jennifer A. Ochs jochs@wsgr.com

Timothy Wayne Riffe Riffe@fr.com

Counsel are responsible for distributing copies of this document to co-counsel that have not

registered for e-filing under the court's CM/ECF program.

Dated: 06/18/09 JAS

Chambers of Judge Whyte

Case 5:05-cv-01668-RMW Document 302 Filed 06/18/09 Page 6 of 6