Microsoft’s Skype cleared of infringing encryption patents

Microsoft’s Skype computer program did not infringe two patents related to data encryption, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled.

Yesterday, February 17, the federal circuit said the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas correctly constructed the claims in two patents asserted by technology company Secure Web Conference.

Both patents are directed to a system of encrypting data communicated between two network devices. The claims state that this is achieved by using a “security device”.

Following the district court’s construction of the patent’s claims in 2014, both parties entered a stipulated judgment of non-infringement.

But Secure Web appealed against the court’s interpretation of the claims.

It argued that a person of ordinary skill in the industry would not have understood that the “security device” described in the claims was limited to a stand-alone telecommunications device.

But the federal circuit was not convinced.

After conducting a de novo review of the Texas court’s interpretation of the claims it agreed that the “security device” described in the patent is limited to a stand-alone component.

“We conclude that one of ordinary skill in the art reading the specification would have understood a security device to be a stand-alone device that is separate from and external to the microprocessor device,” Judge Kara Fernandez Stoll wrote.

“Significantly, at no point does the specification contemplate a security device embedded within a microprocessor based device. To the contrary, the specification touts the separate and stand-alone nature of the security device as an advantage,” she concluded.