Opinion ID: 216683
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other Defenses

Text: Although this court remands to the district court to address the spoliation issue, in the event the district court determines that Rambus did not spoliate documents, and/or that Rambus's patents are not unenforceable, this court considers the waiver and estoppel, claim construction, written description, and obviousness issues raised by Hynix.
A member of an open standard setting organization may be equitably estopped or may have impliedly waived its right to assert infringement claims against standard-compliant products. Qualcomm, 548 F.3d at 1022-24 (noting that either waiver or equitable estoppel may properly be asserted in this context). See also A.C. Aukerman Co. v. R.L. Chaides Constr. Co., 960 F.2d 1020, 1028 (Fed.Cir.1992) (en banc) ( Aukerman ) (holding that equitable estoppel is a cognizable defense against patent infringement). To support a finding of implied waiver in the standard setting organization context, the accused must show by clear and convincing evidence that [the patentee's] conduct was so inconsistent with an intent to enforce its rights as to induce a reasonable belief that such right has been relinquished. See Qualcomm, 548 F.3d at 1020 (citing with approval district court's advisory jury instruction). Such conduct can be shown where (1) the patentee had a duty of disclosure to the standard setting organization, and (2) the patentee breached that duty. See id. at 1011-12. To support a finding of equitable estoppel, the accused must show that [t]he patentee, through misleading conduct, led the alleged infringer to reasonably infer that the patentee does not intend to enforce its patent against the alleged infringer. Aukerman, 960 F.2d at 1028. `Conduct' may include specific statements, action, inaction, or silence where there was an obligation to speak. Id. The two elements of implied waiver must also be shown to prove equitable estoppel, because without a disclosure duty, Hynix could not reasonably infer that Rambus did not intend to enforce its patents against it, and without a breach of that duty, Rambus's nondisclosure could not be misleading conduct. This opinion thus discusses the applicability of both doctrines together. The district court relied on a jury determination that JEDEC members did not share a clearly defined expectation that members would disclose relevant knowledge they had about patent applications or the intent to file patent applications on technology being considered for adoption as a JEDEC standard, Estoppel, 609 F.Supp.2d at 1026, and that prior to Rambus's withdrawal from JEDEC, none of its pending patent applications covered a JEDEC standard, id. at 1027 (The patent[s]-at-issue in this case had not even been applied for during Rambus's membership in JEDEC.). In Infineon, this court held that participation in JEDEC imposed a duty to disclose pending applications and issued patents with claims that a competitor or other JEDEC member reasonably would construe to cover the standardized technology. 318 F.3d at 1100. This court noted that this does not require a formal infringement analysis, id., but applies when a reasonable competitor would not expect to practice the standard without a license under the undisclosed claims, id. at 1101. The determination that there was a dutyand the categorization of its scope as extending to all pending or issued claims that were reasonably necessary to practice the standardis dispositive in this case and should never have been submitted to the jury. However, because this court determines that Infineon's holding that Rambus did not breach the duty of disclosure applies here as well, see infra, submitting the issue to the jury was harmless error. While Rambus was still a member of JEDEC, it disclosed to JEDEC its '703 patent, a member of the '898 patent family with the same written description as the patents in suit. In Infineon, this court determined that the result of this disclosure was that the fraud claim against Rambus was claim-specific and standard-specific, requiring that the claims pending during Rambus's membership in JEDEC were the only ones that could support a fraud ruling. Id. at 1102. Because the patents-in-suit were filed after Rambus left JEDEC in 1996, id., and substantial evidence does not support the finding that these [pending] applications had claims that read on the SDRAM standard, id. at 1103, Rambus's claimed technology did not fall within the JEDEC disclosure duty, id. at 1104. Hynix argues that our determination in Infineon that Rambus did not violate this duty is not binding in this case, primarily because all of the patents in suit claim priority to the '898 application through the patents pending during Rambus's JEDEC participation. Hynix contends that a patentee may not insist on the filing date of the original application for prior art purposes, while asking for the patents to be viewed as filed several years later for purposes of its equitable disclosure obligations. Br. of Hynix at 39 (citing Qualcomm, 548 F.3d at 1019 (rejecting patentee's ex post argument that the asserted patents do not meet the `reasonably might be necessary' standard where the patentee makes an ex ante argument[] regarding infringement)). Hynix argues that the pending applications, Serial Nos. 222,646 ('646 application), 847,961 ('961 application), 469,490 ('490 application), and 448,657 ('657 application), contained claims to the five technologies at issue here, id. at 40, and so this case is distinguishable from Infineon. Were this court writing on a clean slate, it would be tempted to agree that equity demands that Rambus's participation in JEDEC equitably estopped or waived its claims against standard-compliant products, notwithstanding its delay in amending its claims until after its exit from JEDEC. However, this court is not writing on a clean slate. Infineon involved a virtually identical factual situation. Just as Hynix attempts to do here, Infineon relie[d] on other applications [ (i.e., not the patents insuit) ] Rambus had pending before its 1996 withdrawal from JEDEC. Id. at 1102. This court unequivocally held that the claims pending or issued during Rambus's JEDEC tenure were not necessary to practice the standard because substantial evidence does not support the finding that these applications had claims that read on the SDRAM standard. Id. at 1103 (emphasis added). The phrase these applications did not refer to the patents-at-issue, but to Rambus's pending and issued patents during its tenure in the standard setting organization. Thus, there is no inconsistency in alleging that the claims pending during Rambus's participation in JEDEC were not reasonably necessary to practice the standards, but that the claims prosecuted after Rambus's exit from JEDEC were. Hynix does not argue that the '646, '961, '490, or '657 applications are more reasonably necessary to practice the SDRAM standard than the pending applications in Infineon. Hynix does not proffer any persuasive reason why our holding that Rambus did not breach its disclosure duty in Infineon does not control, or why the standard for breach is different in the waiver/estoppel context than in the fraud context. This court thus affirms the district court's conclusion that Rambus did not waive its right to litigate, and is not equitably estopped from litigating infringement by standard-compliant DRAM.
In Infineon, this court reversed the district court's construction of bus in several related patents and some of the same patents at issue as limited to a multiplexed bus because: (1) [t]he claims do not specify that the bus multiplexes address, data, and control information; (2) the phrase bus has a well-recognized meaning in the electrical arts that is not so limited; (3) the prosecution history shows that [a]lthough some of Rambus's claimed inventions require a multiplexing bus, multiplexing is not a requirement in all of Rambus's claims; and (4) some claims further define bus as one that multiplexes, which implies that the patentee did not redefine bus to mean a multiplexing bus. 318 F.3d at 1094-95. Hynix argues that this court has rejected the methodology used in Infineon by implication through our en banc decision in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir.2005). This court disagrees. Although Phillips ruled against the elevation of dictionaries above the specification, id. at 1321, this court nevertheless allowed the use of dictionaries to assist in understanding the commonly understood meaning of words, id. at 1322, which is precisely the use that was made of the dictionary in Infineon, see 318 F.3d at 1094 (The term `bus' is very common in the electrical arts and has a well-recognized meaning in such arts, namely, a set of signal lines (e.g., copper traces on a circuit board) to which a number of devices are connected, and over which information is transferred between devices.) (citing The New IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronic Terms 141 (5th ed.1993)). This court in Infineon determined that the specification could questionably be read to limit the meaning of `bus' in two places, but that the phrase should not be so limited because the prosecution history revealed that multiplexing was only one of many inventions disclosed in the '898 application. 318 F.3d at 1094-95. Additionally, this court looked to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO) restriction requirements, which showed that some of the inventions described in the '898 application did not require the multiplexing bus. Id. at 1095. Finally, this court specifically recognized that inventors may define terms in the specification implicitly, and, like in Phillips, cited Bell Atlantic Network Services Inc. v. Covad Communications Group, Inc., 262 F.3d 1258, 1268 (Fed.Cir.2001) for the proposition that [a] claim term may be clearly redefined without an explicit statement of redefinition. Infineon, 318 F.3d at 1088. Phillips counsels looking to the prosecution history to show what a person of skill in the art would have understood disputed claim language to mean. 415 F.3d at 1314. In Infineon, this court looked to the claim limitations of the ancestor patents, which included a claim limitation for a bus wherein said bus includes a plurality of bus lines for carrying substantially all address, data and control information needed by said semiconductor device for communication with substantially every other semiconductor device connected to said bus [i.e., a multiplexed bus], a limitation that would be redundant if bus already meant multiplexed bus. 318 F.3d at 1096. See also Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1314 (To take a simple example, the claim in this case refers to `steel baffles,' which strongly implies that the term `baffles' does not inherently mean objects made of steel.). Finally, as Rambus points out, this court has favorably cited the claim construction analysis in Infineon since Phillips. Br. of Rambus at 31 (citing Netcraft Corp. v. eBay, Inc., 549 F.3d 1394, 1398 (Fed.Cir. 2008); Ortho-McNeil Pharm., Inc. v. Mylan Labs., Inc., 520 F.3d 1358, 1362 (Fed. Cir.2008); MBO Labs., Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co., 474 F.3d 1323, 1330 (Fed.Cir.2007)). This court is thus bound by the claim construction of this court in Infineon for the term bus. Hynix's arguments on the merits that this court should construe the term bus as limited to a narrow multiplexed bus are inapposite; this court is not writing on a clean slate. This court thus affirms the district court's claim construction of bus.
At the district court, a jury determined that Rambus's patents were not invalid for lack of written description under 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 1. See Ariad Pharms., Inc. v. Eli Lilly and Co., 598 F.3d 1336, 1351 (Fed.Cir.2010) (en banc). Hynix moved for Judgment as a Matter of Law (JMOL) under Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a) and 50(b), and moved in the alternative for a new trial. The district court denied both motions. The test under the written description requirement is whether the disclosure of the application relied upon reasonably conveys to those skilled in the art that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date. Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1351. The law must be applied to each invention at the time it enters the patent process. Id. To overcome the presumption of validity of patents, the accused must show that the claims lack a written description by clear and convincing evidence. ICU Med., Inc. v. Alaris Med. Sys., Inc., 558 F.3d 1368, 1376 (Fed.Cir.2009). The denial of JMOL is a procedural issue, which this court reviews under regional circuit law. Wechsler v. Macke Int'l Trade, Inc., 486 F.3d 1286, 1290 (Fed.Cir.2007). The Ninth Circuit reviews a denial of JMOL de novo. White v. Ford Motor Co., 312 F.3d 998, 1010 (9th Cir.2002). JMOL is appropriate where the evidence, construed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, permits only one reasonable conclusion, id., or in other words, whether the jury's determination of facts is supported by substantial evidence, Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1355. A motion for a new trial can only be granted if the verdict is contrary to the clear weight of the evidence. United States v. 4.0 Acres of Land, 175 F.3d 1133, 1139 (9th Cir.1999). The Ninth Circuit reviews the district court's denial of a motion for a new trial on the basis that the verdict is not against the weight of the evidence for a clear abuse of discretion, a standard that is virtually unassailable. Kode v. Carlson, 596 F.3d 608, 612 (9th Cir.2010) (internal citations omitted). On appeal, Hynix's sole argument is that Rambus's amendments deleting the narrow multiplexed bus limitation in its continuation applications was unsupported by the written description of the '898 application to which they all claim priority. Hynix argues that: (1) the ultimate judgment of written description is a legal determination, citing KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 427, 127 S.Ct. 1727, 167 L.Ed.2d 705 (2007); (2) disclosure of a species does not suffice to claim the genus; and (3) ICU Medical, Inc. v. Alaris Medical Systems, Inc., 558 F.3d 1368 (Fed.Cir.2009) controls. These arguments are unconvincing. First, whether a claim is supported by an adequate written description is a factual inquiry, and has been for some time. Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1355; Utter v. Hiraga, 845 F.2d 993, 998 (Fed.Cir.1988). Hynix's argument that the ultimate determination of written description is a legal issue (relying on the Supreme Court's determination in KSR, 550 U.S. at 427, 127 S.Ct. 1727, that obviousness is a legal issue) is unavailing; written description and obviousness are distinct legal doctrines. Compare 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 1 (written description), with 35 U.S.C. § 103 (obviousness). As such, our review of the district judge's denial of a new trial and denial of judgment as a matter of law on written description is severely circumscribed as a factual issue already decided by a jury and approved by the district court. Second, there is no categorical rule that a species cannot suffice to claim the genus. It is true that, in Ariad, we continued a line of prior holdings that a sufficient description of a genus instead requires the disclosure of either a representative number of species falling within the scope of the genus or structural features common to the members of the genus so that one of skill in the art can `visualize or recognize' the members of the genus. 598 F.3d at 1350 (discussing Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 119 F.3d 1559, 1568-69 (Fed.Cir. 1997)). See also Bilstad v. Wakalopulos, 386 F.3d 1116, 1124 (Fed.Cir.2004) ([T]his court has continued to apply the rule that disclosure of a species may be sufficient written description support for a later claimed genus including that species.). There is no special rule for supporting a genus by the disclosure of a species; so long as disclosure of the species is sufficient to convey to one skilled in the art that the inventor possessed the subject matter of the genus, the genus will be supported by an adequate written description. See Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1351. Whether the genus is supported vel non depends upon the state of the art and the nature and breadth of the genus. Here, the supposed genus consists of only two species, a multiplexed and a non-multiplexed bus, and Hynix has failed to make any argument that persons of ordinary skill would not have understood that Rambus possessed a non-multiplexed bus. That is, Hynix has not argued that the disclosure of the multiplexed bus was not representative of the genus of buses that encompasses both the narrow multiplexed bus and the non-multiplexed bus. There was substantial evidence that the invention would not be undermined by the use of a non-multiplexed bus, including testimony from Rambus's expert that a person of ordinary skill would understand[] that buses come in all shapes and sizes. You can multiplex some lines, you cannot multiplex others. . . . [I]t can be different kinds of buses and you still benefit from the features described in the patent. Additionally, one of the inventors testified that the narrow multiplexed bus was not meant to be something that all these different features . . . [disclosed in the patents] needed to be used with. This testimony serves to aptly distinguish the cases cited by Hynix. See ICU Med., 558 F.3d at 1372, 1374-75, 1378 (detailing solution to problems in the prior art of medical valves used in the transmission of fluids by compress[ing] a seal on the valve to create a fluid pathway, noting that the spike was used to pierc[e] a seal inside the valve to effectuate the invention, and noting that no other method was disclosed to effectuate the fluid pathway because the specification describes only medical valves with spikes); LizardTech, Inc. v. Earth Res. Mapping, Inc., 424 F.3d 1336 (Fed.Cir.2005) ([a]fter reading the patent, a person of skill in the art would not understand how to make a seamless DWT generically and would not understand LizardTech to have invented a method for making a seamless DWT, except by `maintaining updat[ed] sums of DWT coefficients,' where maintaining update[ed] sums of DWT coefficients was the limitation omitted in the claims). Though it would certainly be reasonable to conclude that Rambus's claims do not meet the written description requirement on the basis of ICU Med., that argument was presented to the jury and rejected by it. Hynix has not presented any cogent argument that the jury verdict was unsupported by substantial evidence, or that it was against the clear weight of the evidence. As such, this court rejects Hynix's arguments, and affirms the district court's denial of Hynix's motions for JMOL and new trial.
The district court submitted the question of obviousness of claims 24 and 33 of the '918 patent; claim 33 of the '120 patent; claims 9, 28, and 40 of the '916; and claim 16 of the '863 patent to the jury. After the jury returned a verdict that the claims were nonobvious, Hynix moved only for a new trial, which the district court denied. Hynix appealed, not challenging the denial of a motion for new trial, but rather the district court's ultimate legal judgment of nonobviousness as `an error of law.' Br. of Hynix at 68 n. 27. Through the combination of its failure to move for JMOL to overturn the jury's finding of non-obviousness and its failure on appeal to contest the denial of a motion for new trial, Hynix has waived the right to contest the sufficiency of the evidence or the weight of the evidence, and this court implies from the jury verdict all facts in favor of Rambus. See Duro-Last, Inc. v. Custom Seal, Inc., 321 F.3d 1098, 1108 (Fed.Cir.2003) (noting that the failure to file a post-verdict JMOL waives the right to contest the jury findings for sufficiency of the evidence, and presuming that the jury resolved all underlying factual disputes in [favor of the prevailing party]). Hynix may [only] challenge the judgment on the ground that the judge committed an error of law in coming to his legal conclusion of obviousness. Southwest Software, Inc. v. Harlequin Inc., 226 F.3d 1280, 1297 (Fed.Cir.2000). Hynix nevertheless mines the district court's comprehensive and well-reasoned opinion denying Hynix's motion for a new trial for supposed legal errors. Hynix argues that the district court: (1) improperly considered economic disincentives; (2) improperly considered that it is not easy to recognize when making such combinations will yield benefits, as opposed to messy, expensive complexity; and (3) relied on the jury verdict of a lack of a motivation to combine. None of these arguments have merit. First, in KSR, 550 U.S. at 419, 127 S.Ct. 1727, the Supreme Court noted that market demand is a legitimate consideration in determining obviousness. Lowering cost is a ubiquitous market demand, and the fact that a combination is expected to increase cost has some bearing on the obviousness of that combination. Second, the district court's statement referring to the ease of recognizing the benefits of a combination was to explain why the incentive to combine existing pieces of circuitry was not controlling, i.e., because it was unclear whether the combination would be beneficial or detrimental. How well a combination is expected to work is certainly a legitimate consideration in an obviousness inquiry. Finally, the rationale for combining references is a question of fact, Duro-Last, 321 F.3d at 1109, and, as discussed above, Hynix has waived its right to challenge the factual underpinnings of the obviousness determination. Because Hynix has failed to show any legal error in the district court's conclusion of nonobviousness, this court affirms the jury verdict of no obviousness.