Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. Baxter International, Inc.

127 F. Supp. 3d 687, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112834, 2015 WL 5148850
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Texas
DecidedAugust 3, 2015
DocketCause No. 1-14-CV-222-LY
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 127 F. Supp. 3d 687 (Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. Baxter International, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. Baxter International, Inc., 127 F. Supp. 3d 687, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112834, 2015 WL 5148850 (W.D. Tex. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER ON MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

LEE YEAKEL, District Judge.

Before the court in the above-styled and numbered cause are Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment of Invalidity Based on 35 U.S.C. § 101 filed December 9, 2014 (Clerk’s Doc. No. 47), Plaintiffs Response to Defendant’s Motion filed January 15, 2015 (Clerk’s Doc. No. 55), Defendant’s Reply in Support of Its Motion filed January 26, 2015 (Clerk’s Doc. No. 56), Plaintiffs Notice of Supplemental Authority filed February 3, 2015 (Clerk’s Doc. No. 57), and Defendant’s Response to Plaintiffs Notice of Supplemental Authority filed February 6, 2015 (Clerk’s Doc. No. 59). The court held a hearing on the summary-judgment motion on March 23, 2015, at which both parties appeared through counsel.

After considering the motion, responses, reply, supplemental authority, arguments of counsel, the patent-in-suit, the entire case file, and the applicable law, the court will grant Defendant’s motion for summary judgment of invalidity.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Becton, Dickinson and Company (“Becton”)1 brings this suit against Defendant Baxter International, Inc. (“Baxter”), alleging infringement of United States Patent No. 8,374.887 (the “'887 Patent”). Baxter contends that the asserted claims of the '887 Patent are invalid under Chapter 35, United States Code Section 101 (“Section 101”) for failing to claim patentable subject matter. Specifically, [689]*689Baxter contends that the asserted claims are directed to the abstract idea of “supervision and verification,” and that the addition of “generic technology claimed to implement the abstract idea” fails to provide the required “inventive concept” necessary to “transform the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.” Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank, Int’l, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 2358, 189 L.Ed.2d 296 (2014).

In addition to opposing the motion on substantive grounds, Becton argues that this court should postpone judgment on Baxter’s motion until after claim construction.2 The court disagrees. “Although the determination of patent eligibility requires a full understanding of the basic character of the claimed subject matter, claim construction is not an inviolable prerequisite to a validity determination under § 101.” Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat. Ass’n, 776 F.3d 1343, 1349 (Fed.Cir.2014) (citing Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 714-15 (Fed.Cir.2014)); Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assur. Co. of Canada (U.S.), 687 F.3d 1266, 1273-74 (Fed.Cir.2012) (finding that district court did not err by declaring claims patent-ineligible at pleading stage without first construing claims or allowing parties to conduct fact discovery and submit opinions from experts supporting their claim-construction positions). The court concludes that the asserted claims are drawn to an abstract idea, and there is no reasonable construction of any term that would bring these claims within the bounds of patentable subject matter. Therefore, this court’s Section 101 analysis is appropriate at this stage of the litigation.

A. The '887 Patent

According to the abstract, the '887 Patent is generally directed toward “a method and a system for remotely supervising and verifying technical pharmacy functions performed by a non-pharmacist located in an institutional pharmacy.” The invention is summarized as “providing certain pharmacy services to institutionalized patients at an institution where a live pharmacist is not available” such that an “institutional pharmacy and a remotely located pharmacist are linked via wired or wireless telecommunication systems in a manner that enables the pharmacist to remotely supervise and verify that pharmacy functions are properly performed by non-pharmacist personnel.” '887 Patent 2:13-20.

Claim 1 of the '887 Patent is representative for the purposes of the court’s Section 101 analysis:3

[690]*6901. A method for remote supervision and verification of pharmacy functions that are performed by a non-pharmacist person, comprising:

in response to performance, by a non-pharmacist person, of pharmacy work to prepare a medication at an institutional pharmacy, wherein the pharmacy work requires pharmacist verification of the pharmacy work, wherein performing the pharmacy work comprises the non-pharmacist person performing, at a workstation in the institutional pharmacy, a sterile compounding process to prepare the medication, wherein the medication is compounded from a plurality of material components at the workstation within the institutional pharmacy:
capturing, via an image capture device at the workstation in the institutional pharmacy, one or more images of the pharmacy work performed by the non-pharmacist person as the work is performed by the non-pharmacist person at the institutional pharmacy, wherein at least one of the images is an image of the sterile compounding process performed by the non-pharmacist person that requires verification by a pharmacist for medications to be placed into pharmacy stock; implementing verification software, via one or more computers at the institutional pharmacy, to remotely verify the work performed by the non-pharmacist person, wherein remote verification of the work performed by the non-pharmacist person comprises: transmitting the one or more images captured by the image capture device of the sterile compounding process performed by the non-pharmacist person at the ■ workstation to a remote pharmacist for review, wherein said transmitting the one or more images comprises storing the images on a website; receiving an indication of the remote pharmacist’s verification of the correct performance of the sterile compounding process by the non-pharmacist person; and providing, in response to the indication of the remote pharmacist’s verification, an indication at the institutional pharmacy that the remote pharmacist has verified the sterile compounding process performed by the non-pharmacist person.

'887 Patent 17:37-18:10. Independent Claim 16, the only other independent claim in the '887 Patent, recites the elements of Claim 1, with the exception of the images stored on a website, and adds one additional requirement:

wherein capturing the one or more images comprises capturing two or more images of the sterile compounding process of the sterile compounded medications as the sterile compounded medications are prepared, wherein at least one of the two or more images is captured at a different stage of the compounding of the sterile compounded medications than at least one other of the two or more images;

Id. at 19:38-45.

II. DISCUSSION

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
127 F. Supp. 3d 687, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112834, 2015 WL 5148850, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/becton-dickinson-co-v-baxter-international-inc-txwd-2015.