Federal Circuit reignites Microsoft patent battle
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reignited a patent battle between multinational Microsoft and software company MasterMine Software.
Yesterday, October 30, the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court’s claim construction of two data-mining patents owned by MasterMine, but reversed the court’s determination that they were indefinite and remanded the case.
In 2013, MasterMine sued Microsoft for infringement of two related patents, US patent numbers 7,945,850 and 8,429,518, at the US District Court for the District of Minnesota.
Both patents disclose methods and systems “that allow a user to easily mine and report data maintained by a customer relationship management application”.
Microsoft hit back, seeking a declaration that the patent claims were invalid for indefiniteness.
The Minnesota court agreed with Microsoft, finding that the claims were “indefinite for improperly claiming two different subject matter classes”.
The lower court also construed the term “pivot table” to mean “an interactive set of data displayed in rows and columns that can be rotated and filtered to summarise or view the data in a different way”.
Following construction, the parties stipulated to final judgments of non-infringement and invalidity for indefiniteness, with MasterMine reserving the right to appeal against the claim construction order.
In its appeal to the Federal Circuit, MasterMine challenged both the district court’s claim construction and its indefiniteness determination.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court’s claim construction, finding that construction was supported by the claim language, the patents’ identical specifications, and the prosecution history.
But the Federal Circuit sided with MasterMine on the indefiniteness determination and disagreed on invalidity for indefiniteness for introducing method elements into system claims.
Under 35 USC section 112(2), a patent specification must “conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention”.
Circuit Judge Kara Stoll, speaking on behalf of the court, explained: “In our view, these claims are simply apparatus claims with proper functional language.”
According to the Federal Circuit, because the claims “merely use permissible functional language to describe the capabilities of the claimed system, it is clear that infringement occurs when one makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells the claimed system”.
It added that the claims inform those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention with “reasonable certainty”, so it reversed the district court’s determination.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
Today’s top stories:
UK lawmakers selected to scrutinise UPC legislation
Fish & Richardson re-hires of counsel after stint with Apple
