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Technology Stocks : EDTA (was GIFT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GRC who wrote (2345)	11/6/2000 1:50:51 PM
From: Mel Spivak	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2383

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!