AI Visualize, Inc. v. Nuance Communications Inc.

CourtDistrict Court, D. Delaware
DecidedJuly 8, 2022
Docket1:21-cv-01458
StatusUnknown

This text of AI Visualize, Inc. v. Nuance Communications Inc. (AI Visualize, Inc. v. Nuance Communications Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Delaware primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
AI Visualize, Inc. v. Nuance Communications Inc., (D. Del. 2022).

Opinion

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE

AI VISUALIZE, INC., Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 21-1458-RGA NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. and MACH7 TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Andrew L. Cole, COLE SCHOTZ P.C., Wilmington, DE; Sean N. Hsu, Rajkumar Vinnakota, Gary Sorden, Vishal Patel, COLE SCHOTZ P.C., Dallas, TX. Attorneys for Plaintiff.

David E. Moore, Bindu A. Palapura, Carson R. Bartlett, POTTER ANDERSON & CORRON LLP, Wilmington, DE; David J. Lender, Anish R. Desai, WEIL GOTSHAL & MANGES LLP, New York, NY; Amanda Branch, WEIL GOTSHAL & MANGES, LLP, Redwood Shores, CA; David Greenbaum, NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC., Mahwah, NJ. Attorneys for Defendants.

July 8th 2022

ANDREWS, of STATES DISTRICT JUDGE: Before me is Defendants’ motion to dismiss pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 101 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). (D.I. 24). Defendants argue all Plaintiff's infringement claims should be dismissed because the Asserted Claims are directed to patent ineligible subject matter. (DI. 25 at 1-2). Defendants also move to dismiss Plaintiffs claim of willful infringement for failure to state a claim. (Id. at 21-22). I have considered the parties’ briefing. (D.I. 25, 27, 31). I. BACKGROUND Medical imaging techniques such as computed axial tomography (“CT”) and magnetic resonance imaging (“MRI”) involve taking a series of two-dimensional scans of parallel, planar cross-sections of an area of a patient’s body, resulting in a three-dimensional virtual model of the area that was scanned contained in a “volume visualization dataset”! (““VVD”). (D.I. 22 ff 25-26). This VVD can be used to generate virtual views” of any portion of the area that was scanned by selecting a plane to be cut through the volume of the area at a particular location and angle relative to the planar cross-sections. (Id. J 27). Plaintiff is AI Visualization (“AIV”). Its inventions allow a user to access 3D or higher dimensional’ virtual views of a VVD at her own computer over the Internet, without having to transmit and/or locally store the entire VVD. AIV is the owner of several patents related to these

The term, “volume visualization dataset” is not unique to the field of medical scans. (D.I. 25-2 Ex. 1 at 2:41-42 (explaining the claimed inventions are “for visualizing large medical scans and other volume visualization datasets on any Internet connection”)). 2 “The 3D virtual image is a two-dimensional representation of the 3D object showing the desired perspective of view and may include images showing depth of or through the object in a direction normal to and behind the selected plane of view.” (D.I. 25-2 Ex. 1 at 1:42-46),. 3 4D and 5D views can also be generated. “Scans in 4D can come in the form of time varying 3D scans, or as a result of combining two datasets, such as PET and CT” datasets. (D.I. 25-2 Ex. 1 at 2:12-14). “[W]hen PET-CT are combined and have a time component, this can be termed a 5D scan, which involves very large datasets.” (Id. at 2:15-16)

inventions, including U.S. Patent No. 8,701,167 (“the ’167 Patent”), U.S. Patent No. 9,106,609 (“the ’609 Patent”), U.S. Patent No. 9,438,667 (“the ’667 Patent”), and U.S. Patent No. 10,930,397 (“the 397 Patent) (collectively, “the Asserted Patents”). (Id. { 87). The Asserted Patents share an identical specification. (D.I. 25 at 3). AIV alleges Defendants’ products infringe claims 1, 6, 7, 9, 12, and 13 of the ’167 Patent; claims 1, 4, 6-9, 19, 20, 22, 25, and 26 of the ’609 Patent; claims 1- 3, 8, 9, 11, 14, and 15 of the ’667 Patent; and claims 1-3, 11-14, and 16-18 of the ’397 Patent (collectively, “the Asserted Claims”). (D.I. 22 FJ 90, 99, 111, 121). The parties agree that the 35 Asserted Claims can be grouped into three groups. (D.I. 25 at 5; D.I. 27 at 5). Group 1 includes claims directed to a system for remotely viewing user-requested virtual views of a VVD stored at a centralized database using standard computer equipment (i.e., at least one transmitter, at least one central data storage medium containing the VVD, servers, a resource manager device for load balancing the servers, a security device for controlling communication between the client’s device and the servers, and a physically secured site for housing the aforementioned components) and a web application that executes the user’s request by (1) determining which frames of the requested view are stored locally and which are stored at the centralized database, (2) transmitting the non-locally stored frames to the user’s device, and (3) displaying those frames in combination with any locally stored frames to create the requested views. (D.I. 25 at 5; D.I. 25-2 Ex. 1 at 17). Group 1 contains claims 4 and 6-9 of the ’609 Patent, claim 1 of the ’167 Patent; claims 1-3 of the ’667 Patent; and claims 1-3, 11-14, and 16-18 of the Patent. (D.I. 25 at 5). Group 2 includes claims directed to the same system as the Group 1 claims, where the web application determines whether any of the frames of the requested views are locally stored by assigning each request a “unique identifiable key” and comparing that key with a prior request’s

key to determine whether any values are equivalent. (D.I. 25 at 6; D.I. 25-2 Ex. 1 at 18). Group 2 contains claims 19-20 of the ’609 Patent; claims 6-7 of the ’167 Patent; and claims 8-9 of the ’667 Patent. (/d.). Group 3 is directed to the same system disclosed in the Group 1 claims, except the web application does not check to see whether frames from the requested views are stored locally. (D.I. 25 at 6-7; D.I. 25-2 Ex. | at 19). Instead, the web application requests all frames of the requested views from a centralized server, which first transmits a lower image quality version of the frames for the user to view immediately, and then transmits the higher image quality version. (/d.). Group 3 contains claims 22, 25, and 26 of the ’609 Patent; claims 9, 12, and 13 of the ’167 Patent; and claims 11, 14, and 15 of the ’667 Patent. (/d.). The parties agree Claim 1 of the 609 Patent is representative of Group 1, Claim 19 of the ’609 Patent is representative of Group 2, and Claim 22 of the ’609 Patent is representative of Group 3. (DI. 25 at 5; D.I. 27 at 5); see Content Extraction & Transmission LLC vy, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 776 F.3d 1341, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (finding the district court did not err in limiting its Section 101 analysis to a single representative claim where all claims were “substantially similar and linked to the same abstract idea”). Therefore, I will limit my analysis to Claims 1, 19, and 22 of the ’609 Patent. Claim 1 of the ’609 Patent discloses: A system for viewing at a client device at a remote location a series of three- dimensional virtual views over the Internet of a volume visualization dataset contained on at least one centralized database comprising: at least one transmitter for accepting volume visualization dataset from remote location and transmitting it securely to the centralized database; at least one central data storage medium containing the volume visualization dataset;

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