Defendants Win Summary Judgment on Doctrine of Equivalents Claim
As we noted here, Judge Robert E. Payne recently ruled on two summary judgment motions in WiAV Solutions LLC's patent suit against numerous mobile telephone companies. Our earlier post addressed the Court’s ruling on marking. In his second opinion, Judge Payne granted defendants summary judgment on WiAV’s claim of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. The decision can be found here.
WiAV’s patent provides a method for monitoring the quality of a traffic channel for mobile phones by measuring the quality of a separate control channel. WiAV claimed that a "training sequence" and a "common pilot channel" used by the accused products were equivalent to a control channel. The defendants pointed out, however, that
- the control channel described in the patent carries data, while the training sequence and common pilot channel are fixed sequences that do not carry data.
- the control channel uses error protection while the training sequence and common pilot channel do not
- the control channel described in the patent determines channel quality in a different manner from the training sequence and common pilot channel.
WiAV, Judge Payne ruled, “offers a function, way and result divorced from the language of the claims.” For example, WiAV’s argument that the function of the patented process did not include a control channel was “belied by the claim terms themselves” which made clear that a control channel was required.
In the same opinion, Judge Payne denied summary judgment on literal infringement, and so WiAV's claims remain alive for trial, which is set for October.
