Opinion ID: 615097
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The District Court's Summary Judgment Decision

Text: The district court allowed each party to file one motion for summary judgment, not to exceed thirty-five pages. Following the parties' cross-motions, the district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement for both parties on their respective patent infringement claims. As it relates to Absolute's infringement claims, the district court held that Stealth's XTool Tracker did not meet the providing said host system with one or more of the global network communication links limitation of the '758 and '863 Patents, finding that Absolute failed to demonstrate that the XTool agent sends a link (i.e., two IP addresses) to the host. See District Court Decision, at 671-72. The district court also held that Stealth did not infringe the '914 Patent, the asserted claims for which contain the contacting. . . without signaling limitation, because the XTool Tracker emits an audible signal at the end of every communication with the host. Id. at 673. With respect to Stealth's infringement claim, the district court found that neither the semi-random rate limitation nor the terms of said usage agreement limitation reads onto Absolute's Computrace software. As for the semi-random rate limitation, the court found that Absolute did not literally infringe the '269 Patent because the Computrace product's call-time formula places a call every 24.5 hours after the end of the previous call and, thus, does not meet the randomness requirement. Id. at 666-67. It also found that Absolute did not infringe under the doctrine of equivalents because the semi-random rate limitation of the '269 Patent and Absolute's call-timing formula perform different functions. Id. at 668-69. Finally, the district court found that Absolute did not meet the terms of said usage agreement limitation because its software sends only a serial number of a license to a monitoring center, but the claim, as construed, requires the agent to send actual licensing terms. Id. Accordingly, the district court entered summary judgment of non-infringement for both Absolute and Stealth. [3] The parties filed timely notices of appeal. This court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).