Opinion ID: 775954
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prior Art Limitations on the Doctrine of Equivalents

Text: 39 Infinite next argues that the asserted scope of equivalents would not have been patentable over the following prior art articles: G. David Ripley, DVI - A Digital Multimedia Technology, 32 Communications of the ACM 811 (1989) (Ripley); Ned Greene, Environment Mapping and Other Applications of World Projections, 6 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 21 (1986) (Greene); and Mario Onoe & Yoshinori Kuno, Digital Processing of Images Taken by Fish-Eye Lens, IEEE: Proceedings, New York 105 (1982) (Onoe). According to Infinite, Ripley and Greene disclose fisheye lens cameras capturing hemispherical views, which are digitized and transformed in their entirety to equirectangular projections, from which a user can choose to view a certain portion, while Onoe discloses transformation algorithms for converting a fisheye image to a perspectively correct rectangular image. Interactive responds that substantial evidence supports the jury's finding that the hypothetical claim does not encompass what Ripley, Greene, and Onoe teach. More particularly, Interactive states that the articles individually and cumulatively do not disclose or suggest perspective corrective transformation of only a portion of an image with user selection of magnification and rotation. Infinite counters that the jury's finding is merely advisory on that issue of law. 40 It is well settled law that a patentee cannot assert a range of equivalents that encompasses the prior art. Wilson Sporting Goods Co. v. David Geoffrey & Assocs., 904 F.2d 677, 683, 14 USPQ2d 1942, 1948 (Fed. Cir. 1990). To test this limit, the notion of a hypothetical claim may be useful. Id. at 684, 14 USPQ2d at 1948. A hypothetical claim may be constructed to literally cover the accused device. Id. If such a claim would be unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 102 or 103, then the patentee has overreached, and the accused device is noninfringing as a matter of law. Id. at 683-84, 14 USPQ2d at 1948. The burden of producing evidence of prior art to challenge a hypothetical claim rests with an accused infringer, but the burden of proving patentability of the hypothetical claim rests with the patentee. Streamfeeder, LLC v. Sure-Feed Sys., Inc., 175 F.3d 974, 984, 50 USPQ2d 1515, 1521 (Fed. Cir. 1999). 41 We conclude that Ripley, Greene, and Onoe collectively fail to disclose or suggest the hypothetical version of claim 1 presented to the jury. The Ripley article, written by Infinite's founder, describes a system called Palenque, Ripley at 881-19, which was a precursor of SmoothMove(r). Like SmoothMove(r), Palenque produced an equirectangular panorama file from a photographic image captured by a fisheye lens camera. Id. Although the Ripley article does not address whether Palenque provided perspective correction, magnification, or rotation of the selected portion of the image, the testimony of Ripley and others firmly establishes that Palenque lacked those capabilities; Infinite does not indicate otherwise. In other words, Palenque merely copied a user-specified portion of the panorama for display on an output device, without perspective correction and without the capability for magnification or rotation. 42 The Greene article describes a technique for projecting a fisheye image onto a half cube and thus providing perspective correction. Greene at 27-28. The Onoe article describes three computational methods for correcting distortion in fisheye images and thereby accurately measuring parameters (e.g., distance) from fisheye images. Onoe at 105. One method employs a single fisheye image with partial a priori knowledge of parameters. Id. The other two methods employ stereo fisheye images without a priori knowledge of parameters. Id. 43 While Greene or Onoe may have taught one of ordinary skill in the art to add a perspective correction capability to the Palenque system described by Ripley, it is not clear that perspective correction is applied only to the user-selected portion of the image, rather than to the entire image. Even assuming perspective correction of only a portion of the image, the combination taught by the cited articles would lack at least the capability of the user to magnify or rotate the selected, perspective-corrected portion of the image, and the capability to do so in real time relative to the user's input would certainly not have been obvious. Because claim 1 requires that the perspective correction processing performed by the image transform processor means be done according to a combination of said digitized [input image] signals, said selected viewing angles and said selected magnification, we conclude that hypothetical claim 1 would not have been unpatentable over Ripley, Greene, and Onoe. Furthermore, because claim 5 additionally recites user input of a rotation angle, we conclude that a hypothetical version of claim 5, depending from and further limiting hypothetical claim 1, would also not have been unpatentable over the prior art of record. 44 We reach our conclusion on this issue independently of the jury's verdict. Because we reach the same conclusion as the jury, we need not address the level of deference to which a jury's verdict is entitled in conducting a hypothetical claim analysis. Compare Wilson Sporting Goods, 904 F.2d at 683, 14 USPQ2d at 1948 (holding ensnarement to be an issue of law reviewed de novo) with Tegal Corp. v. Tokyo Electron Am., Inc., 257 F.3d 1331, 1348, 59 USPQ2d 1385, 1398 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (holding that underlying questions of fact in the context of obviousness are reviewed for clear error). 45