Opinion ID: 211768
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “uses within the United States”

Text: The situs of the infringement “is wherever an offending act [of infringement] is committed.” N. Am. Philips Corp. v. Am. Vending Sales, Inc., 35 F.3d 1576, 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (“[Section 271] on its face clearly suggests the conception that the ‘tort’ of 03-1615 55 patent infringement occurs where the offending act is committed and not where the injury is felt.”). The situs of the infringing act is a “purely physical occurrence[].” Id. In terms of the infringing act of “use,” courts have interpreted the term “use” broadly. In Bauer & Cie v. O’Donnell, 229 U.S. 1 (1913), the Supreme Court stated that “use,” as used in a predecessor to title 35, is a “comprehensive term and embraces within its meaning the right to put into service any given invention.” Id. at 10-11. The ordinary meaning of “use” is to “put into action or service.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2523 (1993). The few court decisions that address the meaning of “use” have consistently followed the Supreme Court’s lead in giving the term a broad interpretation. E.g., Roche Prods., Inc. v. Bolar Pharm. Co., 733 F.2d 858, 863 (Fed. Cir. 1984), superseded-in-part by 35 U.S.C. § 271(e) (holding that testing is a “use”). The use of a claimed system under section 271(a) is the place at which the system as a whole is put into service, i.e., the place where control of the system is exercised and beneficial use of the system obtained. See Decca, 544 F.2d at 1083. Based on this interpretation of section 271(a), it was proper for the jury to have found that use of NTP’s asserted system claims occurred within the United States.13 RIM’s customers located within the United States controlled the transmission of the originated information and also benefited from such an exchange of information. Thus, the location of the Relay in Canada did not, as a matter of law, preclude infringement of the asserted system claims in this case. 13 As noted supra, the jury found that RIM’s customers are direct infringers of the patented system, and RIM has not appealed the determination that the customers are directly putting into action the system that is the subject of NTP’s claim limitations. RIM only appeals whether any such use occurs within the United States, in light of the location of the Relay within Canada. 03-1615 56 RIM argues that the BlackBerry system is distinguishable from the system in Decca because the RIM Relay, which controls the accused systems and is necessary for the other components of the system to function properly, is not located within the United States. While this distinction recognizes technical differences between the two systems, it fails to appreciate the way in which the claimed NTP system is actually used by RIM’s customers. When RIM’s United States customers send and receive messages by manipulating the handheld devices in their possession in the United States, the location of the use of the communication system as a whole occurs in the United States. This satisfactorily establishes that the situs of the “use” of RIM’s system by RIM’s United States customers for purposes of section 271(a) is the United States. Therefore, we conclude that the jury was properly presented with questions of infringement as to NTP’s system claims containing the “interface” or “interface switch” limitation; namely, claim 15 of the ’960 patent; claim 8 of the ’670 patent; and claims 28 and 248 of the ’451 patent. We reach a different conclusion as to NTP’s asserted method claims. Under section 271(a), the concept of “use” of a patented method or process is fundamentally different from the use of a patented system or device. In re Kollar, 286 F.3d 1326, 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (recognizing “the distinction between a claim to a product, device, or apparatus, all of which are tangible items, and a claim to a process, which consists of a series of acts or steps.… [A process] consists of doing something, and therefore has to be carried out or performed.”); see Joy Techs., Inc. v. Flakt, Inc., 6 F.3d 770, 773 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (“The law is unequivocal that the sale of equipment to perform a process is not a sale of the process within the meaning of section 271(a).”). Although the Supreme 03-1615 57 Court focused on the whole operable assembly of a system claim for infringement in Deepsouth, there is no corresponding whole operable assembly of a process claim. A method or process consists of one or more operative steps, and, accordingly, “[i]t is well established that a patent for a method or process is not infringed unless all steps or stages of the claimed process are utilized.” Roberts Dairy Co. v. United States, 530 F.2d 1342, 1354 (Ct. Cl. 1976). Because a process is nothing more than the sequence of actions of which it is comprised, the use of a process necessarily involves doing or performing each of the steps recited. This is unlike use of a system as a whole, in which the components are used collectively, not individually. We therefore hold that a process cannot be used “within” the United States as required by section 271(a) unless each of the steps is performed within this country. In the present case, each of the asserted method claims of the ’960, ’172, and ’451 patents recites a step that utilizes an “interface” or “interface switch,” which is only satisfied by the use of RIM’s Relay located in Canada. Therefore, as a matter of law, these claimed methods could not be infringed by use of RIM’s system. See Eli Lilly & Co. v. Am. Cyanamid Co., 82 F.3d 1568, 1571 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (discussing the enactment of section 271(g) and stating that “[p]rior to the enactment of the [Process Patents Amendments Act of 1988], a patentee holding a process patent could sue for infringement if others used the process in this country, but had no cause of action if such persons used the patented process abroad to manufacture products, and then imported, used, or sold the products in this country”); see also Zoltek Corp. v. United States, 51 Fed. Cl. 829, 836 (2002) (stating that “if a private party practiced even 03-1615 58 one step of a patented process outside the United States, it avoided infringement liability, as [section 271(a)] was limited to acts committed within the United States”). Thus, we agree with RIM that a finding of direct infringement by RIM’s customers under section 271(a) of the method claims reciting an “interface switch”14 or an “interface”15 is precluded by the location of RIM’s Relay in Canada. As a consequence, RIM cannot be liable for induced or contributory infringement of the asserted method claims, as a matter of law.