Federal Circuit hands back patent case that Apple had won
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has said a district court was wrong to find that patent claims asserted against Apple were invalid.
In September 2015, interface technology developer Zeroclick sued Apple at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Apple had infringed its US patent numbers 7,818,691 and 8,549,443. The patents relate to modifications that allow interfaces of computers and mobile phones to be controlled using pointer or touch movements (such as the user’s finger) rather than mouse clicks.
Zeroclick alleged that Apple infringed claims 2 and 52 of the ‘691 patent, and claim 19 of the ‘443 patent. Apple responded by arguing that the claims were invalid.
During the claim construction stage, the district court said that the claims were invalid for indefiniteness, “reasoning that the claims recite means-plus-function limitations for which the specifications do not disclose sufficient structure”.
In claims 2 and 52 of the ‘691 patent, the district court said that the limitation “program that can operate the movement of the pointer” is a means-plus-function term. It identified the term “program” as the means of “operating the movement of the pointer over the screen”.
In addition, the district recognised the term “user interface code” in claim 19 of the ‘443 patent as detecting areas on the device’s screen with the user’s finger without applying pressure. It therefore considered it to be a means-plus-function term.
Zeroclick appealed against the district court’s decision and argued that the court was wrong in construing these terms as means-plus-function limitations.
Apple said that the limitations to the claims must be construed under section 112 of the America Invents Act but that, in order to rely on this section, the claim must contain the word “means”.
The Federal Circuit said that neither of the limitations at issue use the word “means” and that Apple did not provide any evidence to support its argument.
It also said that when evaluating whether a claim limitation invokes section 112, it must consider if the phrasing of the claim is “understood by persons of ordinary skill in the art to have a sufficiently definite meaning as the name for structure”. The appeals court said that the district court failed to provide any evidence to rely on this argument.
In its decision, the Federal Circuit said that the district court failed to undertake the relevant inquiry and make related factual findings supporting its conclusion.
Therefore, the court vacated the earlier judgment and remanded it for further proceedings. It awarded Zeroclick costs.
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