Opinion ID: 984451
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: patent claims

Text: The district court next turned to Convolve’s claims of patent infringement. By the time of the district court’s August 2011 summary judgment order, Convolve asserted that Seagate and Compaq infringed, both directly and indirectly, claims 1, 3, 4, and 7–15 of the ’473 patent. Convolve accused Seagate’s ATA III, ATA IV, SCSI, and U5 drives of infringement. Convolve also asserted that Compaq infringed claims 1, 3, 4, and 7–15 of the ’473 patent when it sold computers with the “F10 Bios” and certain Seagate drives. Seagate and Compaq countered that the accused drives did not directly infringe the asserted claims of the ’473 patent because they did not have a “user interface” or target “selected unwanted frequencies,” as required by the patent claims. The district court’s analysis both focused and turned on its construction of the “selected unwanted frequencies” language. The district court construed “selected unwanted frequencies” to mean “at least the chosen unwanted frequencies.” The court explained that the prosecution history of the ’473 patent compelled the court’s construction because the patentee distinguished prior art by disclosing a method that “targets” specific frequencies, rather than reducCONVOLVE v. COMPAQ COMPUTER 17 ing all frequencies indiscriminately. The court further noted that the parties did not dispute that, to practice the ’473 patent, someone would first have to discover unwanted frequencies and then target them for reduction. The district court concluded that, for the accused devices to directly infringe the asserted claims of ’473 patent, the drives must not only reduce unwanted frequencies, but do so by using the “discover” and “target” method. The district court then analyzed each of the accused drives to determine whether they were developed using this method. The district court first turned to the ATA IV drive and determined that the record evidence demonstrated that Seagate targeted a single frequency to reduce; namely, 2.6 kilohertz (“KHz”). Since Seagate targeted that specific frequency, the district court found it irrelevant that other frequencies might happen to be reduced, because those frequencies were not “targeted” for reduction. And, because the claim language is directed at reducing multiple frequencies, the district court held that the ATA IV did not infringe the asserted claims of the ’473 patent because it only targeted a single frequency. The district court next turned to the Seagate SCSI drives. It found that the evidence demonstrated that Seagate engineers did not identify frequencies causing unwanted acoustics and then target them for reduction. The district court found that Seagate engineers instead tried a variety of filters to find the one that gave the best performance, and chose a “low-pass filter” which indiscriminately reduced all frequencies “above the knee.” Because the filter was not chosen to target the specific knee frequency, but was chosen to reduce all frequencies indiscriminately, the court concluded that the SCSI drives did not target “selected unwanted frequencies” and thus did not infringe claims 1, 3, 4, and 7–15 of the ’473 patent. The district court last turned to the Seagate ATA III and U5 drives. For those drives, the district court found 18 CONVOLVE v. COMPAQ COMPUTER that the evidence revealed that Seagate engineers did not identify and target specific frequencies for reduction, but made improvements to create quieter seeks without regard to specific frequencies. The district court further found that Convolve’s contrary evidence was mostly directed at the ATA IV drive, not the ATA III and U5 drives. As such, the district court granted summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Seagate on those drives. Given that Convolve’s claims of infringement against Compaq were predicated on Seagate’s underlying infringement, the district court also granted summary judgment in favor of Compaq with respect to all of Convolve’s direct infringement claims relating to the ’473 patent. The district court also granted summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of both Seagate and Compaq on Convolve’s inducement claims under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). The court reasoned that, because Seagate’s drives did not directly infringe the asserted claims of the ’473 patent, Convolve’s inducement claims must fail for lack of a direct infringer. The district court also held that, even if use of the drives would directly infringe the asserted claims of the ’473 patent, Convolve failed to present any evidence of instances of direct infringement by a user. Though Convolve had proffered evidence that Seagate and Compaq provided end-users instructions on how to select between quick and quiet modes, the district court found that insufficient to demonstrate actual direct infringement by another. The district court next turned to the asserted claims of the ’635 patent. Seagate sought summary judgment on various grounds, but the district court focused on Seagate’s claim that the asserted claims of the ’635 patent were not enabled and, therefore, were invalid. The district court found that, for the written description of the ’635 patent to be enabling as to the asserted claims, it must teach a person of ordinary skill in the art to generCONVOLVE v. COMPAQ COMPUTER 19 ate an input to all physical systems to minimize unwanted dynamics, or vibrations, subject to the other limitations in the claims. Relying on testimony from Dr. Singer that he was unable to implement the asserted claims for “long seeks” in disk drives in 1992, the district court found the patent invalid. Thus, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Seagate on all claims of infringement relating to the asserted claims of the ’635 patent as well as on its affirmative invalidity claim. 5