olm26250-istockphoto-com-patent-
22 March 2017Patents

Federal Circuit rejects appeal in McAfee patent suit

A dispute over claim construction is not enough to revive a patent lawsuit brought against antivirus company McAfee, according to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In a decision handed down yesterday, March 21, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by a district court.

Colorado-based TVIIM had sued McAfee in the US District Court for the Northern District of California back in 2013, alleging infringement of US patent number 6,889,168.

The patent, issued in 2005, is directed to “Apparatus and methods for analysing security vulnerabilities in a computer system”.

According to the claim, McAfee infringed through its Program Updates product, which was used by Microsoft Windows users to protect software programs against new security threats.

Microsoft was not a party in the lawsuit.

McAfee counterclaimed for declarations of non-infringement, invalidity and inequitable conduct.

A jury backed McAfee, finding that the antivirus company hadn’t infringed the patent and that the patent was invalid.

TVIIM then filed motions for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial.

The Federal Circuit said that according to TVIIM, the jury could not have arrived at both a non-infringement and invalidity determination using a single construction of three claim terms: “as a result of/in response to”; “various utility functions”; and “reporting the discovered vulnerabilities”.

The court added that TVIIM had conceded that it didn’t seek construction of any of these terms before or during trial.

Both motions were denied by the district court.

The Colorado-based company then appealed, challenging the jury verdict and the district court’s denial of its post-verdict motions.

On appeal, TVIIM conceded that “substantial evidence” supported the jury’s finding for either non-infringement or invalidity, but argued it did not support both.

The company  added that the jury gave an inconsistent verdict of infringement and invalidity because the claim terms have more than one ordinary meaning.

But the Federal Circuit disagreed, adding that it was not persuaded that any of the three terms had “multiple ordinary meanings”.

Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna, on behalf of the court, added that it discerned no error in the district court submitting the terms to the jury without specific instruction.

“We affirm because substantial evidence supports the jury’s findings of non-infringement and invalidity under a uniform construction of the relevant claim terms, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying a new trial,” said Reyna.

Did you enjoy reading this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk