RESEARCH CORPORATION TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. MICROSOFT CORP. (D.Ariz. 2002)

WILLIAM D. BROWNING, Senior United States District Judge.

Pending before the Court are the Parties' requests for claim construction under Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370 (1996) and Defendant's Motion to Preclude reference to report and recommendation by a Special Master in a related case and the subsequent and to an Order regarding summary judgment entered by Judge Manuel Real in Research Corporation Technologies, Inc. v. Lexmark, Inc. The parties have completely briefed the issues and oral argument on claim construction was held on September 27, 2002.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

RCT is an agent for patent holders, usually universities. They manage the patent for a computer program that contains a method of half-toning (creating pictures from small dots) called a "Blue Noise Mask" ("BNM") which generates high quality halftone images, using very little computer memory, that was considerably faster than the prior art. RCT claims that Microsoft has incorporated this program into its software without first licensing the patent. RCT has also made this claim against several printer manufacturers.

In a suit against Lexmark, the Court appointed a special master to determine the meanings of the claim terms. Judge Real later used these definitions when he performed the claim construction in the context of Defendant's Summary Judgment Motion. Judge Real denied the Motions for Summary Judgment.

The Parties have determined fifty-eight terms must be construed for claim construction purposes. Of those fifty-eight, the Parties contest the definitions of only twenty-eight of the terms. Generally, Plaintiff has argued for a definition that is within the "ordinary and customary" meaning, while Defendant has argued that the definition must include limiting terms so that the terms may only be read within the context of the patents their specifications.

II. ANALYTICAL STRUCTURE

The "construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim is exclusively within the province of the court," and the court is to construe the claims as a matter of law. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370, 372 (1996). When construing the language of a patent claim, a court must first consider the evidence intrinsic to the patent, i.e., the claims of the patent, the patent specification, and, if in evidence, the prosecution history of the patent. Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed. Cir. 1996). First, the court considers the language in the asserted claims. The words "are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning."

Next, the court examines the patent's specifications if the claim terms are amiguous. This contains a written description of the invention. "For claim construction purposes, the description may act as sort of dictionary, which explains the invention and may define terms used in the claims." Markman, 52 F.3d at 979. Usually, the specifications is the single best guide to the meaning of a disputed term. Vitronics, 90 F.3d at 1582.

However, limitations for the specifications need not be read into the claims. SRI, Int'l v. Matsushita Elec. Corp. of America, 775 F.2d 1107, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1985). Generally, examples set forth in the specification do not limit the scope of a claim. Transmatic, Inc. v. Gulton Indus., Inc., 53 F.3d 1270, 1277 (Fed. Cir. 1995). A patentee need not describe in the specification every conceivable and possible future embodiment of his invention. CCS Fitness, Inc. v. Brunswick Corp., 288 F.3d 1359, 1370 (Fed. Cir. 2002).

The court may also consider extrinsic evidence if it determines that the evidence would aid it in determining the meaning of ambiguous claims. Vitronics, 90 F.3d at 1583. Extrinsic evidence includes such things as expert testimony, dictionaries and treatises used to determine the meaning or technical terms and terms of art. However, experts may not offer testimony that contradicts the meaning of the claims when that meaning is made clear by the specification of the patent.

III. CONSTRUCTION OF DISPUTED CLAIM TERMS

After reading the briefs, receiving tutorials from the Parties' experts, considering Defendant's Motion to Preclude, and reading Judge Real's Order in Research Corporation Technologies, Inc. v. Lexmark, Inc., the Court finds that the definitions offered by Plaintiff come most closely to the "ordinary and customary" definitions. Additionally, the Court rejects Defendant's contention that the terms must be read in the context of the patents' specifications. The Court reads Markman to say that the specifications offer insight into the meanings of the terms, when they are not clear on the face. This is not the case here. Accordingly, the Court adopts the Plaintiff's definitions for the 28 contested definitions.

IV. CONCLUSION

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Motion to Preclude is DENIED.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following definitions shall be used when construing the claims made in the patents at issue:

1. AN APPROPRIATELY PLEASING PATTERN

A pattern that draws upon one or more of the characteristics of the human visual system to produce a visual response that is pleasing to the eye.

2. BLUE NOISE DOT PROFILE

A dot profile that (1) has small or negligible low frequency components; (2) is locally a periodic; and (3) is isotropic (low anisotropy)

3. BLUE NOISE MASK

A halftone mask with wraparound properties that produces blue noise and visually pleasing dot profiles in any level of gray.

4. BLUE NOISE POWER SPECTRUM

A power spectrum which has small or negligible low frequency in the low frequency region adjacent the ordinate of the frequency plot; a transition region from the low frequency region; and a high frequency region which has an absence of strong or dominant spikes sensed as artifacts in the spatial domain.

5. COLOR IMAGE

An image that is formed and captured in more than one wavelength of light.

6. COLOR PLANES

The decomposition of a color image into separate primary color components, called planes, for each number of a set of primary colors.

7. COMPARATOR

A device (or collection of operations, as in software) that compares an input number (called the operand) to a number pre-stored in the comparator (called the threshold) and produces as output a binary value (such as "0", zero) if the input is algebraically less than the threshold, and produces the opposite binary value (such as "1", one) if the input algebraically greater than or equal to the threshold.

8. DOT PROFILE

The binary dot pattern resulting from performing a halftoning operation at a constant gray level.

9. ERROR CRITERIA

The difference between the desired properties of a dot profile and the observed current properties of a dot profile in processing to create dot profiles for a halftone mask.

10. GRAY SCALE IMAGE

Collection of numerical gray scale values, as stored in a computer, for the gray tone pixel measurements of an image.

11. HIGH-FREQUENCY COMPONENTS

The frequencies that are among the greater in the frequency index, as constructed from the power spectrum of a dot profile.

12. MODIFIED BY HUMAN VISUAL RESPONSE

Changed by one or more of the known characterization of the manner in which the human visual system responds to visual stimuli.

13. IMAGE INFORMATION

Any information obtained from a continuous tone image.

14. INFORMATION DERIVED FROM SAID IMAGE

Any information obtained from a continuous tone image.

15. ISOTROPIC

Possessing the same properties when measured in any direction.

16. LOW FREQUENCY COMPONENTS

The frequencies that are among the smaller in the frequency index, as constructed from the power spectrum of a dot profile.

17. MATCHING OF EACH DOT PROFILE TO SAID BLUE NOISE POWER SPECTRUM PREDETERMINED FOR THAT GRAY LEVEL

There is a family of blue noise power spectra, and their corresponding blue noise dot profiles, that are appropriate for any gray level, and each dot profile can be matched with a member of that family of power spectra appropriate for that gray level.

18. NON-ORDERED

Appearing random and possessing no discernible sequencing or structuring

19. NON-WHITE NOISE

All the power spectrum values are not approximately equal.

20. PIXEL-BY-PIXEL COMPARISON

A threshold operation in which a single pixel gray scale value, derived from the continuous tone image, will be compared to a single pixel value of a mask to determine whether a dot is turned on at the corresponding pixel location in the resultant halftone image.

21. RANDOM FUNCTION

The value of the function is not predictable from any amount of observation of previous values of the function.

22. RANDOM, NON-DETERMINISTIC

An entity, such as a quantity, event or thing (e.g., a number, or a position of a dot) that is not predictable in outcome, i.e., there is no fixed or known or determinable rule that, by observation of the previous examples of the entity alone, allows the prediction of any future example of the entity.

23. SMALL OR NEGLIGIBLE LOW FREQUENCY COMPONENTS

Values near the ordinate of the power spectrum graph that be neglected (so close to zero) or are substantially less in magnitude compared to high frequency components.

24. SPATIAL DOMAIN FILTERING

Computation with a spatial domain filter on a dot profile that alter the characteristics of the profile according to the characteristics of an equivalent transform domain filter.

25. THRESHOLDED

The result of comparing an operand against a fixed threshold and setting an operand less than the threshold to one value and an operand greater than or equal to the threshold to another value.

26. TRANSFORM DOMAIN FILTERING

Altering the Fourier frequency components of a signal (such as a dot profile).

27. VISUALLY PLEASING

A dot profile is visually pleasing if it possesses the collection of properties that must include: (1) a periodicity; (2) isotropy (low anisotropy); and (3) lack of low-frequency graininess.

28. WRAPAROUND PROPERTIES

Including explicit provisions (e.g., in the computer code use to generate a mask) to compensate for filing artifacts.