Source: http://www.delawareiplaw.com/page/4
Timestamp: 2016-10-23 22:01:48
Document Index: 185367959

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101']

Delaware IP Law Blog — Page 4 of 188 — Published by Wilmington, Delaware Intellectual Property Litigation Lawyer — Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP
Posted in: Leonard P. Stark, Chief Judge	Published on: September 3, 2016	Updated:
Posted in: Gregory M. Sleet	Published on: September 1, 2016	Updated:
September 8, 2016 11:05 pm
Judge Andrews denies Daubert motions
In a series of related actions, Judge Richard G. Andrews considered and denied Plaintiff’s Daubert motion to exclude Defendants’ expert as well as Defendants’ Daubert motion to exclude Plaintiff’s expert Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, et al. v. Breckenridge Pharmaceutical, Inc., C.A. No. 14-1043-RGA (D. Del. Aug. 18, 2016, amended Aug. 25, 2016).
The Court denied the motions without prejudice to the parties’ renewing their objections to the expert testimony at trial, and made additional specific observations regarding these motions. First, as to Defendants’ expert, the Court expected the expert would be able to testify about whether a person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to make a certain decision, explaining that “[s]imply because he could not identify where all his data came from at deposition does not mean he will be unable to do so at trial.” Id. at 1. But the Court was “dubious” as to whether Defendants could succeed on certain of their invalidity theories. Id. As to Plaintiff’s expert, the Court did not anticipate that he would have to conduct independent studies in order to opine on obviousness to combine. Id. at 2. Further, the Court disagreed that the expert misstated the applicable law at his deposition, but “even if he did, that is not a reason to exclude his trial testimony.” Id. at 2-3.
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, et al. v. Breckenridge Pharmaceutical, Inc., C.A. No. 14-1043-RGA (D. Del. Aug. 18, 2016, amended Aug. 25, 2016)
Posted in: Richard G. Andrews	Published on: September 1, 2016	Updated:
September 1, 2016 8:16 am
September 1, 2016 12:52 am
Posted in: Sherry R. Fallon, Magistrate Judge	Published on: September 1, 2016	Updated:
Posted in: Richard G. Andrews	Published on: August 29, 2016	Updated:
Posted in: Sue L. Robinson	Published on: August 29, 2016	Updated:
In Princeton Digital Image Corporation v. Nordstrom.com LLC, et al., C.A. No. 13-408-LPS (D. Del. Aug. 16, 2016), Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark granted Plaintiff’s motion to set aside the Clerk’s entry of default, but also awarded sanctions to third-party intervenor Adobe for Plaintiff’s failure to answer its complaint in this action.
Defendants in this action are customers of Adobe, and Adobe had successfully moved to intervene in this and related suits due to its customers’ requests for indemnity. Id. at 2. Adobe then filed a complaint in intervention in this and related cases. While Plaintiff answered the complaint and counterclaimed in related suits, it did not do so in this action. Consequently, the Clerk had entered default against Plaintiff. Id. at 2-3.
The Court granted Plaintiff’s motion to set aside the entry of default, but required Plaintiff to “only assert[] defenses that are identical to those asserted in the Related Suits,” except that Plaintiff was prohibited from asserting a counterclaim that had already been dismissed in the related actions. Id. at 4. The Court explained that “[g]iven the identicality of the claims and defenses in this case and the claims and defenses in the Related Suits, there are no significant concerns of inefficiency or prejudice that would warrant deciding the issues in this case in Adobe’s favor based solely on [Plaintiff’s] default.” Id. at 4-5.
Posted in: Leonard P. Stark, Chief Judge	Published on: August 29, 2016	Updated:
Judge Andrews Grants Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings Based on Section 101
Judge Andrews recently granted a motion filed by several defendants under Rule 12(c) seeking to invalidate the patents-in-suit as ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Court found that two of the patents-in-suit “are directed to the abstract idea of (1) sending information, (2) directing the sent information, (3) monitoring receipt of the sent information, and (4) accumulating records about receipt of the sent information.” Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, et al., C.A. No. 14-1006-RGA, Memo. Op. at 8-10 (D. Del. Aug. 15, 2016). Judge Andrews further explained that there was no “inventive concept” sufficient to rescue this abstract idea because, although the specifications pointed to a specific system architecture as the innovation in question, “[n]one of the claims . . . recite or refer to anything that could be described as an architecture.” Id. at 10-11. Two other patents-in-suit were similarly deficient. Id. at 12-15.
Judge Andrews’ decision involved two interesting procedural points that movants may wish to note. First, the patentee argued that the “motion is premature because claim construction is necessary to determine patent eligibility under § 101” but Judge Andrews issued an order requiring the patentee to identify “the claim terms it contends need construction and . . . its proposed constructions.” The Defendants argued that those constructions did not alter the § 101 analysis and Judge Andrews adopted the constructions for purposes of the motion. Id. at 5-6.
Second, the patentee argued that the Court should consider materials from prior proceedings before the PTO and in other litigations, which arguably “demonstrate[] how [its] invention[s] solved specific technical problems and added significant inventive concepts over the prior art.” But Judge Andrews found the materials in question “irrelevant to the § 101 motion for judgment on the pleadings [because] [n]one of the materials addresses a § 101 challenge to claims of the asserted patents” but rather the “novelty and nonobviousness of the claims under§§ 102 and 103, [which] does not bear on whether the claims are directed to patent-eligible subject matter under § 101, [as well as the] history of conception of the invention and commercial embodiments of the invention. Id. at 7.
Posted in: Richard G. Andrews	Published on: August 22, 2016	Updated:
In Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark’s Markman opinion in a series of related actions brought by Plaintiffs Intellectual Ventures I and II, the Court concluded that several disputed terms were indefinite, and further concluded that several terms appearing in the preambles of the claims were limiting. E.g., Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. AT&T Mobility, et al., C.A. No. 13-1668-LPS (D. Del. Aug. 12, 2016).
The Court concluded that the term “optimize” in the larger phrase “allocating means for allocating resources to said IP flow … so as to optimize end user application IP QoS requirements of said software application” was indefinite because the specification “indicate[d] that QoS is subjective and that QoS can vary from user to user based on individual preferences. . . . This subjective, user-based understanding would make it difficult, if not impossible for a POSA to ascertain, with reasonable certainty, whether the claim limitation is satisfies by any particular embodiment. Id. at 20-21. The Court also agreed with Defendants that “terms of degree” used in another patent rendered the claims indefinite, as a POSA “would not understand the terms ‘large’ and ‘small’ with ‘reasonable certainty,’” and the Court found the testimony of Defendant’s expert persuasive on this point. Id. at 34-35 (citations omitted).
As to terms in the preambles, the Court concluded that the term “frequency hopping” in a preamble was limiting where the preamble was relied on to distinguish the invention from the prior art. Plaintiff had done so during an inter partes review proceeding and, furthermore, this term appeared “in the patent’s title and throughout the specification. The term is needed to ‘give life, meaning and vitality to the claim.’” Id. at 10. As to a different term appearing in another patent (“application aware resource allocator at the MAC laywer / application-aware media access control (MAC) layer”), again the Court concluded the term was limiting in a preamble where the patentee relied on the term during prosecution to distinguish over prior art. Id. at 16.
Posted in: Leonard P. Stark, Chief Judge	Published on: August 19, 2016	Updated: