Federal Judiciary

Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment of Noninfringement Granted

By Michael Smith

USA Video Technology Corp. v. Time Warner Cable, 2007 WL 4365773 (Dec. 10, 2007)
Judge: Ron Clark
Holding: Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment of Noninfringement GRANTED
After conducting the claims construction hearing in this case, Judge Clark concluded that the accused products did not literally infringe the patent, and that prosecution history estoppel barred application of the doctrine of equivalents.  He therefore granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment.
In doing so, Judge Clark noted that the plaintiff had not asserted infringement under equivalents, but instead simply "reserved the right" to do so depending on the Court's claims construction.  The problem with this strategy, Judge Clark observed, was that the phrase at issue was not one of the phrases the parties asked the court to construe.  Accordingly, Judge Clark concluded that in the face of the prosecution history, the Plaintiff had not produced any evidence or argument to rebut the Festo presumption that it had surrendered everything between the original claim limitation and the amended claim limitation, and thus was estopped from asserting infringement by equivalents.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on December 13, 2007 (boomark / email).