Here is a summary of what the court decision says.
First, having read the decision, I agree with GRC,
Here is the "bottom line":
IMO, the lower court got 95% of it wrong. The lower court's
decison, according to this decision, was almost totally wrong.
This decision gives EDTA almost all of what they were appealing
about and is a tremendous victory.
I "distilled out" much of the legal "mumbo jumbo" and left in quotes
that are relevant to what the decision really means.
Here goes:
..."Accordingly, we construe a material object to be a tangible medium
or device in which information can be embodied, fixed, or stored,
other than temporarily, and from which the information embodied
therein can be perceived, reproduced, used or otherwise communicated,
either directly or with the aid of another machine or device.
A material object must be offered for sale, and be purchasable,
at point of sale locations where at least one IMM is located.
Further, a material object must be separate and distinct from
the IMM, removed from the IMM after purchase, and
intended for use on a device separate from the IMM either at
the point of sale location or elsewhere. "Material object"
does not encompass the hard disk component of a home personal
computer. Finally, a material object need not be
offered for sale independently from the information that
may be reproduced onto the material object, that is, as a blank.
The IMM does these 5 things: transmitting a request reproduction
code and receiving and decoding encoded information.
These five functions of the IMM are all of a type that can
be performed within a computer, and it is well within the
reasonable expectation of a person skilled in the art to move
the boundaries between the four identified components to suit
we construe the term IMM to require communication with a remote
device, such as but not restricted to an ICM, and hold that
the district court’s definition of IMM as requiring
communication with an ICM is erroneous.
Further, the invention is primarily concerned with
distributed reproduction, and there is nothing to suggest
that a person skilled in the art would not readily understand
that the invention could be practiced without the received
information being encoded, without decoding the received
information, or without receiving information "on a
unidirectional signal path . . . in analog form."
We agree ... that the authorization code need only
authorize copying. Our holding is based on the claim
language and the language of the specification identified
in IGE’s asserted definition before the district court.
First, the language of the independent claims does not
require that the information be encoded, much less that
the authorization code have decoding information.
Encoded information is not claimed until claim 5.
Further, the claim language itself suggests that the
sole function of the authorization code is
"authorizing . . . reproduction." Freeny patent,
col. 28, l. 47 (claim 1).
(The patent) states that "if [the request for reproduction is] approved,
[the ICM] provides an authorization code."
Id. at col. 6, ll. 4-5. Later, it notes that
information is reproduced only with permission,
"such permission being indicated by the authorization code."
The court concludes that: (1) an authorization code must authorize copying but need not provide decoding information;
(2) the term "authorization code" is not to be construed to require that it include an IMM code or that it be transmitted
electronically; and (3) an authorization code is separate and distinct from a request reproduction code.
The patent also claims that real-time delivery is disclosed in the
specification and points to embodiments in the specification
that it alleges utilize real-time delivery.
According to the court, this is how the Freeny patent "works":
the following sequence of events occurs (the parenthetical notations
referring to the sequence of steps recited in exemplary claim 1):
(1) the user provides a request reproduction code to the IMM (step
two) and the IMM receives it (step four);
(2) the IMM sends the request reproduction code to the ICM
(not claimed);
(3)the ICM provides an authorization code to the IMM
(step three) and the IMM receives it (step four); and
(4) the IMM copies the information onto a material object (step four).
In the Court's conclusion, Accordingly, we hold that claim 1
is not limited to embodiments that pre-store or pre-deliver
the information to the IMM, but that it covers real-time
transactions in which the requested item of
information is transmitted to the IMM at or prior to the
time it is requested by the consumer.
CONCLUSION
We hold that the district court erred ... Accordingly, we vacate
and remand (send back to the lower court) for further proceedings
consistent with the claim construction provided in this opinion.
That means the lower court gets it back so that they can now
"get it right" . Go Freeny Patent! |
