Opinion ID: 3178457
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sales by Alcatel U.S.

Text: The 1996 cross-licensing agreement between AT&T and Alcatel covered “any or all products and services of the kinds” which the parties used or sold on the effective date of the agreement. J.A. 5395. In High Point’s view, the MGWs sold by Alcatel Marketing U.S. to T-Mobile were not licensed products because Alcatel was not “in the business of selling MGWs in January 1996.” Br. of Plaintiff-Appellant at 41. In support, it argues that the MGWs Alcatel Marketing U.S. sold to T-Mobile were not original Alcatel products, but were instead manufactured by Spatial Communications Technologies Inc., a company acquired by Alcatel in 2004. We do not find this argument convincing. The crosslicensing agreement between AT&T and Alcatel speaks in exceptionally broad terms, covering “any or all products . . . of the kinds” sold by Alcatel in 1996. J.A. 5395. There is no dispute that Alcatel sold switching systems in 1996. Its 1996 Annual Report stated that it manufactured and marketed “complete telecommunications systems,” and that its global business included “public switching networks” and “mobile communications infrastructure.” J.A. 5433. That report further noted that Alcatel manufactured “switching systems” compliant with worldwide technical standards as well as with both current and emerging U.S. technical standards. J.A. 5428. Because Alcatel indisputably sold switching systems in 1996 and MGWs are integral switching system components, they are products “of the kind[]” that Alcatel sold on the effec10 HIGH POINT SARL v. T-MOBILE USA, INC. tive date of its cross-licensing agreement with AT&T. 2 See District Court Decision, 53 F. Supp. 3d at 807 (“High Point does not dispute that Alcatel sold ‘switching systems’ in 1996, and that MGWs are a type of switching system.”). Indeed, before the district court High Point argued that the accused MGWs met switching system limitations in the patents-in-suit. See, e.g., J.A. 6310. In Rembrandt Data Techs., LP v. AOL, LLC, 641 F.3d 1331, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2011), we construed a licensing provision very similar to the one at issue here. There the license in question extended to “products and services sold by [a] future divested business prior to its divestiture,” and the patent holder argued that this language covered only the specific product models that were sold by the divested business before it was divested. Id. at 1338 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). We rejected this argument, however, concluding that because the licensing agreement “specif[ied] product types using general, functional terms,” it was not limited to the particular products sold at the time of the divestiture. Id. We explained that the term “products” covered “modems generally, not specifically the exact types of modems in production at the time of the . . . divestiture.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the language of the licensing provision is even broader—covering not only “products and services,” id., but “any or all products and services of the kinds” sold on 2 In its infringement contentions, High Point identified MGWs as integral switching system components. See, e.g., J.A. 5859 (“The T-Mobile Network includes a plurality of switching systems . . . . T-Mobile’s switching systems comprise one or more of the following components, either alone or in combination with one or more other such components: RNCs, MGWs, [Mobile Switching Centers] and/or components thereof.”). HIGH POINT SARL v. T-MOBILE USA, INC. 11 the date of the parties’ cross-licensing agreement, J.A. 5395 (emphasis added); see District Court Decision, 53 F. Supp. 3d at 807 (stating that it was “difficult to hypothesize a broader grant of a license” than the 1996 license AT&T granted to Alcatel). Although High Point argues on appeal that the 1996 cross-licensing agreement was intended to extend only to those future products which had the “same features or functionality” as products sold in 1996, Reply Br. of Plaintiff-Appellant at 15, it fails to identify anything in the text of the agreement or in the course of the parties’ licensing negotiations to support this contention. To the contrary, given that the expansive cross-licensing agreement between AT&T and Alcatel was executed at a time of rapid technological evolution, we do not think that the parties intended to protect only those products that had the “same features or functionality” as those sold in 1996. Instead, the provision in the crosslicensing agreement identifying protected products uses “general, functional terms,” Rembrandt, 641 F.3d at 1338, to cover not just the particular components sold in 1996 but any products of the same type or “kind.”