{"id":3248,"date":"2022-05-20T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=3248"},"modified":"2022-05-22T06:38:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T11:38:23","slug":"and-can-mean-or-depending-on-the-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=3248","title":{"rendered":"“AND” Can Mean “OR” Depending on the Context"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Kaufman v. Microsoft Corp.<\/a>, [2021-1634, 2021-1691] (May 20, 2022) the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Microsoft’s post-judgment challenges to a $7 million damage award for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,885,981, and reversed the district court’s denial of prejudgment interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2019981 patent addresses the creation of user interfaces that permit users to interact with data in relational databases. One of the issues was whether the claim required the automatic generation of an end user interface. The word automatic did not appear on the body of the claim, but the preamble stated that the method involved a “processor for automatically generating and end-user interface.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft moved for summary judgment, arguing that that the phrase \u201cautomatically
generating\u201d found in the preamble of claim 1 is limiting, and means that \u201cno human labor required,\u201d and thus Microsoft product does not infringe. Microsoft argued that the district court erred in failing to clarify the reach of the \u201cautomatically\u201d requirement for the jury, warranting a new trial under O2 Micro because a clarification could reasonably have led the jury to a different verdict. However, the Federal Circuit held that Microsoft failed to preserve its O2 Micro challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Federal Circuit noted that in the original Markman proceeding, the parties did
not request a construction of the word \u201cautomatically\u201d or raise an issue of the scope of the \u201cautomatically generating\u201d requirement. During the motion for summary judgment
briefing, Microsoft described the \u201chuman labor\u201d involved in use of Dynamic Data, and it
asserted a need for a claim construction under O2 Micro<\/em>, but it said only that there was \u201ca fundamental legal dispute as to the meaning of “automatic” in the claims, it never clearly said that, apart from what \u201cautomatic\u201d means, a construction was needed specifying what functions had to be automatic, i.e., the scope of the \u201cautomatically generating\u201d requirement. Further, Microsoft never offered the district court a formulation of such a claim construction resolving that scope issue, including at the at the pre-trial hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Federal Circuit also rejected Microsoft\u2019s argument, presented for the first time on appeal, that \u201cautomatically generating\u201d should be construed broadly to require some defined set of steps beyond those recited by the claims in (a), (b), and (c) to be performed automatically. Microsoft never proposed such a construction to the district court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft’s final argument was that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding infringement, but the Federal Circuit agreed with the district court correctly explained, the jury reasonably that the manual step identified by Microsoft were not part of the claim requirement that were required to be performed automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding that Microsoft failed to establish that the district court erred in its claim construction or that the jury\u2019s verdict was not supported by substantial evidence, the Federal Circuit affirmed the jury\u2019s finding that the accused processes come within the \u201cautomatically generating\u201d limitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft also argued that the district court erred in the post-trial ruling when it concluded that \u201cand\u201d means \u201cand\/or,\u201d contending that the phrase should be given the conjunctive
meaning, so that the client application (constituting the end-user interface) must integrate into each of the individual mode displays (for creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting) all three of the \u201cprocesses for representing, navigating, and managing said relationships across tables.\u201d The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court’s construction, noting that a claim construction that excludes a preferred embodiment is rarely, if ever correct and would require highly persuasive evidentiary support. The Federal Circuit noted that in the sole embodiment in the patent, a “retrieve” display lacks a “managing” process. The the Federal Circuit said that “and” must be construed as “and\/or” so that the claim would cover the only disclosed embodiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Federal Circuit recognized that it cannot redraft claims whether to make them operable or to sustain their validity, or to cause them to encompass the sole described embodiment, it said that that is not what it was doing here. The Court said where there is \u201conly one reasonable construction,\u201d it has recognized that, in certain contexts, the word \u201cand\u201d can reasonably be understood to denote alternatives, rather than conjunctive requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the Federal Circuit addressed the denial of prejudgment interest. The district court provided two rationales for denying prejudgment interest to Kaufman: first, that the jury
verdict \u201csubsumed interest,\u201d and second, that Mr. Kaufman was responsible for \u201cundue delay\u201d in bringing the lawsuit, causing prejudice to Microsoft. The Federal Circuit said that the jury verdict cannot reasonably be understood to include interest, noting there was no testimony about how the interest would be calculated. The Federal Circuit also said that the district court also erred in finding Kaufman was responsible for undue delay justifying the denial of prejudgment interest. The Federal Circuit said that the fact that Mr. Kaufman
did not sue for five years after he became aware of Microsoft\u2019s potential infringement does not alone justify a finding of undue delay. The Federal Circuit said that Microsoft presented
no evidence as to why Kaufman\u2019s delay was undue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Kaufman v. Microsoft Corp., [2021-1634, 2021-1691] (May 20, 2022) the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Microsoft’s post-judgment challenges to a $7 million damage award for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,885,981, and reversed the district court’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-claim-constructino","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3251,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions\/3251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}