Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC

D. Delaware

Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC

DecidedJune 1, 2021

Docket1:19-cv-01937

StatusUnknown

This text of Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC (Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC) 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

Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC, (D. Del. 2021).

Pincite

Opinion

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE

EXPRESS MOBILE, INC.,

Plaintiff,

v. Civil Action No. 19-1937-RGA

GODADDY.COM, LLC,

Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Timothy Devlin, DEVLIN LAW FIRM LLC, Wilmington, DE; James R. Nuttall, Michael Dockterman, Robert F. Kappers, Tron Fu, Katherine H. Johnson, STEPTOE & JOHNSON LLP, Chicago, IL; Christopher A. Suarez, STEPTOE & JOHNSON LLP, Washington, DC, Attorneys for Plaintiff.

Beth Moskow-Schnoll, Brittany Giusini, Brian S.S. Auerbach, BALLARD SPAHR LLP, Wilmington, DE; Brian W. LaCorte, Jonathan A. Talcott, BALLARD SPAHR LLP, Phoenix, AZ, Attorneys for Defendant.

June 1, 2021 /s/ Richard G. Andrews ANDREWS, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE:

Before me is the issue of claim construction of multiple terms in U.S. Patent Nos. 6,546,397 (the ’397 Patent), 7,594,168 (the ’168 Patent), 9,063,755 (the ’755 Patent), 9,471,287 (the ’287 Patent), and 9,928,044 (the ’044 Patent). I have considered the Parties’ Joint Claim Construction Brief. (D.I. 64). I held remote oral argument on April 8, 2021. (D.I. 77). The parties argued ten terms there. I asked for supplemental briefing on two of them, which is underway. (D.I. 80). I now decide the other eight terms. I. LEGAL STANDARD “It is a bedrock principle of patent law that the claims of a patent define the invention to which the patentee is entitled the right to exclude.” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc) (internal quotation marks omitted). “‘[T]here is no magic formula or catechism for conducting claim construction.’ Instead, the court is free to attach the appropriate weight to appropriate sources ‘in light of the statutes and policies that inform patent law.’” SoftView LLC v. Apple Inc., 2013 WL 4758195, at *1 (D. Del. Sept. 4, 2013) (quoting Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1324) (alteration in original). When construing patent claims, a court considers the literal language of the claim, the patent specification, and the prosecution history. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 977–80 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc), aff’d, 517 U.S. 370 (1996). Of these sources, “the specification is always highly relevant to the claim construction

analysis. Usually, it is dispositive; it is the single best guide to the meaning of a disputed term.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1315 (internal quotation marks omitted). “[T]he words of a claim are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning. . . . [Which is] the meaning that the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention, i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application.” Id. at 1312–13 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). “[T]he ordinary meaning of a claim term is its meaning to [an] ordinary artisan after reading the entire patent.” Id. at 1321 (internal quotation marks omitted). “In some cases, the ordinary meaning of claim language as understood by a person of skill in the art may be readily apparent even to lay judges, and claim

construction in such cases involves little more than the application of the widely accepted meaning of commonly understood words.” Id. at 1314. When a court relies solely upon the intrinsic evidence—the patent claims, the specification, and the prosecution history—the court’s construction is a determination of law. See Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U.S. 318, 331 (2015). The court may also make factual findings based upon consideration of extrinsic evidence, which “consists of all evidence external to the patent and prosecution history, including expert and inventor testimony, dictionaries, and learned treatises.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1317–19 (internal quotation marks omitted). Extrinsic evidence may assist the court in understanding the underlying technology, the meaning of terms to one skilled in the art, and how the invention works. Id. Extrinsic

evidence, however, is less reliable and less useful in claim construction than the patent and its prosecution history. Id. “A claim construction is persuasive, not because it follows a certain rule, but because it defines terms in the context of the whole patent.” Renishaw PLC v. Marposs Societa’ per Azioni, 158 F.3d 1243, 1250 (Fed. Cir. 1998). It follows that “a claim interpretation that would exclude the inventor’s device is rarely the correct interpretation.” Osram GMBH v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 505 F.3d 1351, 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). II. BACKGROUND The specifications of the ’397 and ’168 patents are “substantively identical” (D.I. 71 at 6), as are, separately, the specifications of the ’755, ’287, and ’044 patents (id. at 14). The two common specifications are different from each other; for claim construction purposes, the two

sets of patents are unrelated and therefore extrinsic evidence to each other. The inventions display an in-work webpage in real time so a web developer can view the webpage during editing as it would appear to an end user viewing the webpage through a browser. The following claims are the most relevant for the purposes of this Markman: Claim 1 of the ’397 Patent 1. A method to allow users to produce Internet websites on and for computers having a browser and a virtual machine capable of generating displays, said method comprising:

(a) presenting a viewable menu having a user selectable panel of settings describing elements on a website, said panel of settings being presented through a browser on a computer adapted to accept one or more of said selectable settings in said panel as inputs therefrom, and where at least one of said user selectable settings in said panel corresponds to commands to said virtual machine;

(b) generating a display in accordance with one or more user selected settings substantially contemporaneously with the selection thereof;

(c) storing information representative of said one or more user selected settings in a database;

(d) generating a website at least in part by retrieving said information representative of said one or more user selected settings stored in said database; and

(e) building one or more web pages to generate said website from at least a portion of said database and at least one run time file, where said at least one run time file utilizes information stored in said database to generate virtual machine commands for the display of at least a portion of said one or more web pages.

(D.I. 1-1, Ex. A (“the ’397 patent”), claim 1) (emphasis added).

Claim 2 of the ’397 Patent 2. An apparatus for producing Internet websites on and for computers having a browser and a virtual machine capable of generating displays, said apparatus comprising:

(a) an interface to present a viewable menu of a user selectable panel of settings to describe elements on a website, said panel of settings being presented through a browser on a computer adapted to accept one or more of said selectable settings in said panel as inputs therefrom, and where at least one of said user selectable settings in said panel corresponds to commands to said virtual machine;

(b) a browser to generate a display in accordance with one or more user selected settings substantially contemporaneously with the selection thereof;

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