Opinion ID: 210871
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Electronic Multi-Function Card Limitation

Text: 22 Once a case has been decided on appeal, the rule adopted is to be applied, right or wrong, absent exceptional circumstances, in the disposition of the lawsuit. Gindes v. United States, 740 F.2d 947, 949 (Fed.Cir.1984) (quoting Schwartz v. NMS Indus., Inc., 575 F.2d 553, 554 (5th Cir. 1978)). E-Pass argues that the district court disobeyed the mandate of this court by entering summary judgment in favor of the defendants as to the subject of the prior appeal, the electronic multi-function card limitation of claim 1 of the '311 patent. It further argues that the district court disobeyed our mandate when it elaborated upon our claim construction in E-Pass I in light of the teachings of this court's en banc decision in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed.Cir.2005) (en banc). We disagree as to each of these contentions. 23
24 E-Pass's first argument rests in substantial part on our statement in E-Pass I that issues of material fact remain in dispute as to both literal and doctrine of equivalents infringement under the proper construction of the term card. E-Pass I, 343 F.3d at 1365. That statement, however, must be read in context. As the very same sentence announced, we vacated the grant of summary judgment and remanded to the district court for further proceedings. Id. By vacating, we signaled that, although the district court's prior decision rested upon erroneous grounds, a proper claim construction might support a judgment (summary or otherwise) in favor of either party, depending on the evidence and argument submitted to the district court on remand and considered by the district court in the first instance. Cf. Communities for Equity v. Mich. High Sch. Athletic Ass'n, 459 F.3d 676, 680 (6th Cir.2006) (noting that when the Supreme Court grants a writ of certiorari, vacates, and remands, it does not indicate, nor even suggest, that the lower court's decision was erroneous). 25 The balance of our opinion in E-Pass I supports this interpretation. We discussed in detail the claim construction of the term card and the district court's error in construing card to mean a card with the precise dimensions of a standard credit card. E-Pass I, 343 F.3d at 1367-71. At the conclusion of this discussion, we emphasized that under the correct construction of `card' in this context ... it may or may not be that the accused Palm Pilot devices literally infringe. Id. at 1371. Indeed, we could not have intended to foreclose a summary judgment of noninfringement because the record did not yet contain the evidence that the parties would put forward in support of their infringement and noninfringement contentions under the proper construction. 26 Accordingly, the district court correctly concluded that it had the authority to entertain the defendants' motions for summary judgment on remand. SJ Order, slip op. at 11, 12; see also Liquid Dynamics Corp. v. Vaughan Co., Inc., 449 F.3d 1209, 1220 (Fed.Cir.2006) (Issues not decided by the court in a prior proceeding are not covered by the law-of-the-case doctrine.). As the district court observed, we did not in E-Pass I inten[d] ... to preclude [the district court] from hearing a complete summary judgment motion as to the Palm VII on remand. 1 SJ Order, slip op. at 12. As we discuss next, the district court on remand properly undertook a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the infringement issues, and in so doing, it followed our claim construction in E-Pass I. 27
28 In E-Pass I, we addressed the question of whether the district court had improperly added a dimensional limitation to the claim. See 343 F.3d at 1368-69. We concluded that a dimensional limitation was not warranted and overturned a claim construction that improperly limited the claim to encompass only devices having exact credit card dimensions. Id. at 1368. We went on to hold that the ordinary meaning of the word `card' ..., as used in the phrase `electronic multi-function card,' is the proper construction. Id. at 1370-71. From this, we articulated a definition of card—namely, a flat rectangular piece of stiff material—derived from several general-purpose dictionaries. See id. at 1367-68. 29 Following our decision in E-Pass I and prior to the district court's ruling on remand, our court, sitting en banc, decided Phillips. 415 F.3d at 1303. In its brief, Visa argues that the district court was at liberty to reconstrue `card' because Phillips supercedes the 3Com panel decision. Visa Br. at 19-20. This is an overstatement. A claim construction articulated by a prior panel decision of this court ordinarily remains the law of the case unless it is in conflict with a subsequent decision by this court sitting en banc or by the Supreme Court. See Cal. Fed. Bank v. United States, 395 F.3d 1263, 1274-75 (Fed.Cir. 2005) (declining to revisit earlier ruling where intervening en banc decision was not in direct conflict, and where Supreme Court analysis of the same issue controlled); see also United States v. Moran, 393 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir.2004) ([A] legal decision made at one stage of a criminal or civil proceeding should remain the law of that case throughout the litigation, unless and until the decision is modified or overruled ....). Here, we see no conflict between the guidance provided in Phillips and the claim construction we articulated in E-Pass I. As we discuss below, see infra Part II.A.2, the district court correctly applied our construction as the governing definition of card. 30 Nonetheless, any articulated definition of a claim term ultimately must relate to the infringement questions that it is intended to answer. See Wilson Sporting Goods Co. v. Hillerich & Bradsby Co., 442 F.3d 1322, 1326 (Fed.Cir.2006) ([T]he legal function of giving meaning to claim terms always takes place in the context of a specific accused infringing device or process.). The definition of card that we articulated in E-Pass I described the properties of a card relevant to the accused devices, and it thereby sufficed to determine the question of infringement. Thus, the district court's observation that not every flat rectangular piece of stiff material is a card, see SJ Order, slip op. at 26, was not strictly necessary to its holding. 31 Even so, the district court's observation was correct. For example, no reasonable jury, if properly instructed, would conclude that a 4' × 8' × ½ piece of plywood or a plate glass window infringes the card limitation of '311 patent claim 1. See id. The specification of the '311 patent makes it clear that a card, as used in the patent's claims, is something a user will carry about. See, e.g., '311 patent, col. 1, l. 44. Although not a precise restriction on size or portability, the attributes of being able to be carried about and of not having protruding buttons, keyboards, antennae, indented display screens, or hinged covers are characteristics that a complete claim construction of card can be expected to embrace. 32 Moreover, we reiterated in Phillips the paramount importance to claim construction of the language of the claims themselves. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1312; see also Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 ([W]e look to the words of the claims themselves ... to define the scope of the patented invention.). This case hinges on the construction of a term that not only bears one of its ordinary meanings, but is a straightforward name for an everyday object. Most members of a jury are likely to have at least one card in the sense of the '311 patent in their pockets, wallets, or purses. The district court implicitly recognized this observation when it boiled the infringement inquiry down to a straightforward question—using the plain meaning of the word `card,' can any of the accused devices be considered to be a `card'? SJ Order, slip op. at 33.
33 Answering this question of infringement brings us, as it brought the district court, back to an application of the claim construction in E-Pass I. As the district court correctly observed, the accused devices are neither flat nor rectangular: 34 They have buttons, joysticks and keyboards which project above the surface. They have screens which sit below the surface. Some have indented spaces holding a stylus which can be used on the device. They have projecting antennae. The Treo cell phone has a full QWERTY keyboard and a flip cover which sits at a 150 degree angle to the surface of the phone when it is open. 35 .... 36 ... A review of the accused devices ... shows that none of them meet the definition [of rectangular]. Corners and edges are fully rounded. The sides of the devices are generally curved, some convex, some concave, rather than straight. They have built-in or flip-up antennae which completely alter the straight line sides of a rectangle. Some have USB connectors which have the same effect. 37 SJ Order, slip op. at 31-32. Likewise, the accused devices are not piece[s] of stiff material, see E-Pass I, 343 F.3d at 1371, but rather are all elaborate mixes of multiple pieces and multiple materials, SJ Order, slip op. at 32. Accordingly, the district court properly concluded that no reasonable jury could find that the accused devices are cards. 38 E-Pass argues that in performing its infringement analysis, the district court improperly treated the words of our claim construction as additional claim limitations. E-Pass is correct that [c]laim interpretation is the process of giving proper meaning to the claim language, Abtox, Inc. v. Exitron Corp., 122 F.3d 1019, 1023 (Fed. Cir.1997), and that the terms courts use to enunciate the proper construction of a claim are not themselves limitations that require interpretation. Here, however, any error was harmless. Although the district court may have carried the process of claim construction unnecessarily too far, it did not improperly depart from the claim construction of card as articulated by E-Pass I. 39 Accordingly, we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment of noninfringement as to the electronic multi-function card limitation.
40 The above discussion does not resolve the question of whether the accused devices might meet the card limitation of claim 1 under the doctrine of equivalents. The district court held that [i]nasmuch as the patent method must be performed on a card, a performance on something that is not a card cannot be considered to be a performance in the same way as that required by the patent, and cannot constitute infringement by the doctrine of equivalents. Id., slip op. at 36. However, this conclusion is too summary. 41 Under the all elements rule, the doctrine of equivalents must be applied to individual elements of the claim, not to the invention as a whole. Warner-Jenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chem. Co., 520 U.S. 17, 29, 117 S.Ct. 1040, 137 L.Ed.2d 146 (1997). As we recently explained in Depuy Spine, Inc. v. Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Inc., the all elements rule may foreclose resort to the doctrine of equivalents where the evidence is such that no reasonable jury could conclude that an element of an accused device is equivalent to an element called for in the claim, or that the theory of equivalence to support the conclusion of infringement otherwise lacks legal sufficiency. 469 F.3d 1005, 1018-19 (Fed.Cir.2006). 42 E-Pass's theory of equivalence is that no reasonable jury could conclude that the differences between the accused products and the electronic multi-function card of the '311 patent are substantial. Mot. for Summ. J. of Infringement Against PalmOne, Inc., E-Pass, Inc. v. 3Com, Inc., Nos. 00-CV-2255, 03-CV-4747, 04-CV-0528 (N.D.Cal. Aug. 26, 2005) (Dckt. No. 464). This is the proper inquiry. To hold that performance of the claimed method on something not a card is not a performance in the same way as that required by the patent, SJ Order, slip op. at 36, is to beg the question of whether the accused devices—which, taken as a whole, are alleged to meet a single limitation of the claimed method—are insubstantially different from a card. 43 We need not decide whether the district court's judgment as to the doctrine of equivalents can be sustained on other grounds, nor indeed whether the alleged equivalence of the accused devices to cards is amenable to summary judgment. As we discuss next, we agree with the district court that E-Pass has failed to meet its burden of proof on the question of whether anyone has practiced the steps of the claimed method. This, without more, warrants affirmance.