Opinion ID: 210871
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Steps of the Claimed Method

Text: 44 The district court held, simply, that E-Pass has submitted no evidence that the patented method has ever been practiced on any Palm VII device. The same circumstance is true as to the Tungsten, Zire and Treo devices—there is no evidence that the patented method has ever been practiced on any of these devices. SJ Order, slip op. at 17. E-Pass argues that this summary conclusion improperly ignores circumstantial evidence of direct infringement that supports its claim of inducement of infringement as to all of these devices. We disagree; we have no reason to believe that the district court ignored any of this evidence, all of which was before it. Cf. Medtronic, Inc. v. Daig Corp., 789 F.2d 903, 906 (Fed.Cir.1986) (We presume that a fact finder reviews all the evidence presented unless he explicitly expresses otherwise.). Even when all the evidence that E-Pass cites is accounted for, its claim cannot survive summary judgment. 2 45 E-Pass's difficulty is twofold. Procedurally, it is hornbook law that to survive the defendants' motions for summary judgment, E-Pass must make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of [each] element essential to [its] case. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Substantively, because the language of most of the steps of its method claim refer to the completed results of the prior step, E-Pass must show that all of those steps were performed in order. E.g., '311 patent, claim 1 (transferring a data set ...; storing said transferred data set); see Mantech Envtl. Corp. v. Hudson Envtl. Servs., Inc., 152 F.3d 1368, 1376 (Fed.Cir. 1998) (holding that the sequential nature of the claim steps is apparent from the plain meaning of the claim language and nothing in the written description suggests otherwise). 46 The documents that E-Pass cites on appeal are not sufficient to meet its burden under Celotex. First, it cites a chart of documents produced by Visa, showing that Visa was interested in PDA-based payment technology. However, this chart does not demonstrate that Visa actually performed or induced anyone to perform all of the steps of the claimed method, much less that it did so in the necessary order and in the United States. Second, it cites to a Visa document describing plans for a contactless payment demonstration in Cartes, France, in 2004. This, too, fails to demonstrate that the steps of the method were actually performed, much less that they were performed in the United States. Likewise, its citations to business analyses of proposed contactless payment protocols fail to show that any such protocol was ever actually deployed or that, if deployed, it would infringe. 47 E-Pass's final piece of evidence, to which it devotes the bulk of its argument, is a set of excerpts from the product manuals for various of the accused devices. These, it argues, establish infringement under Moleculon Research Corp. v. CBS, Inc., 793 F.2d 1261 (Fed.Cir.1986). In Moleculon, we considered a claim of induced infringement against the distributor of a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle. Id. at 1272. The patented method—a protocol for solving such a puzzle—could only be infringed by a user, not the manufacturer, of the puzzle, just like the method at issue here. We held that evidence of extensive puzzle sales, dissemination of an instruction sheet teaching the method of restoring the preselected pattern with each puzzle, and the availability of a solution booklet on how to solve the puzzle was sufficient to support a finding that a puzzle distributor had induced infringement of the claimed method. Id. 48 In contrast, the evidence here shows, at best, that the Palm defendants taught their customers each step of the claimed method in isolation. Nowhere do the manual excerpts teach all of the steps of the claimed method together, much less in the required order. Accordingly, it requires too speculative a leap to conclude that any customer actually performed the claimed method. Indeed, the very same record evidence upon which E-Pass attempts to rely also shows that the accused PDAs are general-purpose computing devices that can be used for a variety of purposes and in a variety of ways. In comparison, the device at issue in Moleculon was intended to be used in only one way — to practice the infringing method — and that method was explicitly taught by the proffered instructions. Id. If, as E-Pass argues, it is unfathomable that no user in possession of one of the accused devices and its manual has practiced the accused method, see E-Pass Repl. Br. at 16, E-Pass should have had no difficulty in meeting its burden of proof and in introducing testimony of even one such user. Having failed to meet that burden, E-Pass has no basis to overturn the district court's decision.