Opinion ID: 211752
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Infringement of Claims 1, 2, and 33

Text: 47 Having adopted Ericsson's construction, we are nonetheless unable to conclude that it mandates judgment in Ericsson's favor on claims 1, 2, and 33. Harris refuses to concede that Ericsson's accused system lies outside the scope of a two-step claim. Harris, in fact, argues that even under this claim construction we should affirm the judgment of infringement because substantial evidence demonstrates that Ericsson's device infringes under § 112 ¶ 6 because its one-step Viterbi MLSE algorithm is equivalent to the corresponding structure of the time domain processing means. Such evidence, according to Harris, includes testimony by Ericsson's expert that one-step and two-step symbol decoding processes perform the same function—producing estimates; testimony by a Harris expert and a '338 patent inventor that a one-step Viterbi algorithm and the two-step process involving equation (7) disclosed in the patent are both MLSE shortcuts that dramatically reduce the number of hypotheses that have to be tested; testimony by the same two individuals that both of these processes select, as the most likely hypothesis, the hypothesis that minimizes the sum of the squares of successive noise values assumed added to the sequence; and testimony by Ericsson's expert that the second step of selecting discrete decisions is fairly simple. In response, Ericsson cites testimony by Harris's aforementioned expert and inventor that the disclosed two-step process is not a form of MLSE, and Ericsson also contends that Viterbi MLSE would not have been feasible in the long-distance communication applications for which the '338 patent was designed because it is too slow to deal with the large amount of intersymbol interference that arises in those applications. 48 We are unwilling to decide the issue of § 112 ¶ 6 equivalence in the first instance in this appeal. Also, the parties did not fully brief the issue of structural equivalence of one-step and two-step processes before the district court. See Ecolab, Inc. v. Envirochem, Inc., 264 F.3d 1358, 1369 (Fed.Cir.2001). Rule 50(d), which governs the denial of a motion for JMOL, is apposite: If the appellate court reverses the judgment, nothing in this rule precludes it from determining that the appellee is entitled to a new trial, or from directing the trial court to determine whether a new trial shall be granted. Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(d). As permitted by Rule 50(d), we remand the issue of infringement of claims 1, 2, and 33 to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the claim construction adopted herein, including a determination of whether a new trial should be granted.