Patent Law

Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the Central District of California U.S. District Court on August 12, 2008 granted defendant Venali, Inc.'s Motion for Summary Judgment of Non-Infringement (filed on June 17, 2008).  The following is excerpted from the Judge's order:

[Download order_granting_venali_summary_judgment.pdf]

On July 1, 2005, Plaintiff Catch Curve, Inc.(?Catch Curve?) brought this suit against Defendant Venali, Inc. (?Venali?) alleging patent infringement. Catch Curve is the owner by assignment of the following patents: U.S. Patent No. 4,994,926 (the ??926 Patent?), U.S. Patent No. 5,291,302 (the ??302 Patent?), U.S. Patent No. 5,459,584 (the ??584 Patent?), U.S. Patent No. 6,643,034 (the ??034 Patent?), and U.S. Patent No. 6,785,021 (the ??021 Patent?). These patents are all entitled ?Facsimile Telecommunications System and Method.?

This Court?s claim construction specifically construed Catch Curve?s patents as limited to communications from one fax machine to another fax machine. Venali is engaged in fax-to-email and fax-to-web services, not the fax-to-fax communications covered by Catch Curve?s patents. Venali?s system does, in fact, store messages. However, these messages are not the ?facsimile messages? disclosed by Catch Curve?s claims. Accordingly, there can be no literal infringement of Catch Curve?s remaining claims.

As a side note, I found footnote 2 of particular interest:

The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, offers a comprehensive definition of technical terms not found in most dictionaries. The Ninth Circuit has found Wikipedia to be a reliable source for defining Internet-related terms.See Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.Com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (using Wikipedia to define the term ?develop? in the Communications Decency Act as applied in a web-related context). All definitions of Internet terms are from Wikipedia unless otherwise noted. See generally http://www.wikipedia.org (last visited July 8, 2008).

The full Order is available for download following the link above.  Thanks to the reader who alerted me to and provided the copy of the Order.  This reader also stated that, "the owners have already collected $35 million from fax-to-email providers."  I did not attempt to independently verify this statement.  If someone has information to support this claim, please comment below.