Opinion ID: 2731747
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Construction of “Attention Manager”

Text: As discussed in the Background, supra, the phrase “attention manager” appears in claims 15–18 of the ’652 patent. In its claim construction order, the district court adopted the Defendants’ proposed construction: “a system that displays images to a user either when the program detects that the user is not engaged in a primary interaction or as a background of the computer screen.” Interval, 2013 WL 792791, at . The court explained that it relied on “the only description in the specification that gives objective boundaries to the scope of this limitation: the ‘screensaver’ and ‘wallpaper’ embodiments.” Id. In contrast to the “in an unobtrusive manner that does not distract a user” phrase, there is no uncertainty about the definitional relationship between the claim term “attention manager” and the written description. The patented invention is a self-coined “attention manager.” No one disputes that the “attention manager” is 20 INTERVAL LICENSING LLC v. AOL, INC. defined by all of the disclosed embodiments. What is in dispute, and what we must consider in reviewing the construction of “attention manager,” is whether the district court read the embodiments too narrowly and thus improperly limited the scope of the claim term. Interval proposes modifying the claim construction as follows: a system that displays images to a user either when the program detects that the user is not en- gaged in a primary interaction or as a background of the computer screen an area of the display screen that is not substantially used by the user’s primary activity. See Appellant’s Br. 53. With regard to the first proposed modification—the removal of “the program detects that” phrase—Interval argues that the district court mistakenly limited the screen saver to a single mode of operation. Interval notes that the specification describes two ways of activating the screen saver: (1) through the detection of an idle period or, alternatively, (2) through direct user activation. See ’652 patent, 9:21–36. In response, the Defendants suggest that the system still “detects” user activation even in the alternative embodiment, and that the district court’s inclusion of “detects” is thus consistent with the patents’ description of the screen saver. Although the Defendants’ reading is plausible, we think that Interval’s reading better conforms to the distinction drawn between “detection” and “user-activation” in the written description. We therefore agree with Interval that the phrase “the program detects that” should be removed from the construction. With regard to the second proposed modification—the replacement of “a background of the computer screen” with “as an area of the display screen that is not substanINTERVAL LICENSING LLC v. AOL, INC. 21 tially used by the user’s primary activity”—Interval argues that its change is faithful to a “lexicographical definition” in the specification of the ’652 patent. Appellant’s Br. 53 (citing Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1321). Interval faults the district court for basing its construction on a general definition of “wallpaper” in the specification. See ’652 patent, 1:50–52 (describing wallpaper as “a pattern generated in the background portions on a computer display”). Instead, Interval urges, the construction should be based on an express definition of “wallpaper embodiment”: According to another further aspect of the inven- tion, the selective display of an image or images occurs while the user is engaged in a primary in- teraction with the apparatus, which primary in- teraction can result in the display of an image or images in addition to the image or images gener- ated from the set of content data (the “wallpaper embodiment”). Id. at 3:25–31. We agree with Interval that the wallpaper embodi- ment of the attention manager should not be strictly limited to the “background” of a computer screen, and we agree that the specification’s description of the embodiment should inform our construction. The district court’s construction suggests that displayed images must be integrated into the background display, similar to the “patterns” of the traditional wallpaper described in the background of the invention. See id. at 1:50–52. But the patents’ description of the wallpaper embodiment supports a broader reading. The patent describes the embodiment as making use of unused spatial capacity—that is, space in the display not used by the user’s primary interaction. See id. at 3:25–31, 6:45–51. The specification does not indicate that the images must be displayed as part of the background of the display device. 22 INTERVAL LICENSING LLC v. AOL, INC. We note, however, that Interval’s proposed modification (“an area of the display screen that is not substantially used by the user’s primary activity”) is not taken directly from the cited “lexicography.” Rather, the proposed language appears to be Interval’s interpretation of where the images will be displayed while the user is engaged in a primary interaction. Based on our reading of the specification, the attention manager is better construed as displaying images in areas “not used”— instead of “not substantially used”—by the user’s primary activity. The specification consistently describes how the attention manager makes use of “unused capacity.” Moreover, the specification twice contrasts a user’s “primary interaction with the apparatus” with the display of information in areas “not used” by the information associated with the primary interaction. See id. at 2:15–19, 6:43–45. The phrase “not substantially used,” by contrast, appears nowhere in the specification. In sum, with the exception of the addition of the word “substantially,” we agree with Interval’s proposed construction of “attention manager.” Accordingly, we adopt the following construction: “a system that displays images to a user either when the user is not engaged in a primary interaction or in an area of the display screen that is not used by the user’s primary activity.”