Tomita Technologies USA, LLC v. Nintendo Co.

855 F. Supp. 2d 33, 2012 WL 612487, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24985
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedFebruary 22, 2012
DocketNo. 11 Civ. 4256 (JSR)
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 855 F. Supp. 2d 33 (Tomita Technologies USA, LLC v. Nintendo Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tomita Technologies USA, LLC v. Nintendo Co., 855 F. Supp. 2d 33, 2012 WL 612487, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24985 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).

Opinion

[35]*35 MEMORANDUM

JED S. RAKOFF, District Judge.

Tomita Technologies USA, LLC (“Tomita”), the owner of the intellectual property rights of inventor Seijiro Tomita, sues Nintendo Co., Ltd. (“Nintendo”) for patent infringement, claiming that the Nintendo 3DS infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,417,664 (the “'664 patent”). On November 22, 2011, the Court heard oral argument regarding how to construe certain terms in the claims of the '664 patent. On December 31, 2011, the Court issued a “bottom-line” order construing the relevant terms. This Memorandum explains the reasons for the Court’s bottom-line order.

By way of background, the '664 patent seeks to solve a problem in the technology of three-dimensional or “stereoscopic” imaging. Technicians have long used the same basic approach to project three-dimensional images. See generally Declaration of John Merritt dated October 27, 2011 (“Merritt Deck”) ¶¶ 16-28. In the old days, viewers often wore glasses that had blue lenses (over their right eyes) and red lenses (over their left eyes). Id. ¶ 21 fig. 3. If the screen displayed one image to those viewers, their eyes would have focused on that image, which would have appeared to be flat and to lie on the surface of the screen. In contrast, if the screen displayed two images, a blue one on the right and a red one on the left, the viewers’ right eyes would have focused on the blue image, which they would have seen through the blue lenses, and their left eyes would have similarly focused on the red image. Id. Since the viewers’ two eyes would have focused on different parts of the screen, the focal point — i.e., the point at which the eyes’ lines of sight would have intersected — would have been beyond the surface of the screen, making the image appear to be inside the screen, ie., to have “three-dimensional” depth. Id. To make this system work, however, the blue and the red images would have to be captured by two different cameras or other instruments positioned to replicate the different locations of each viewer’s two eyes. Id. ¶ 22.

This system created certain problems, since viewers’ distances from the screen varied, as did the sizes of the screens on which presentation occurred. Id. This variance changed the viewers’ focal points. Id. For example, if a viewer was closer to the screen than the presenter anticipated, her eyes’ lines of sight would have intersected at a point that was not as far inside the screen as the presenter desired. As a result, the image would have seemed flatter to the viewer than the presenter intended. Id. ¶ 30.

In an attempt to address this kind of problem in situations where the viewer has some control over the display, the '664 patent describes an apparatus that records not just two images (e.g., a red and a blue image), but also a variety of other information about the focal point so that a single viewer can adjust the display to attain the desired degree of stereoscopic effect. Id. ¶¶ 31-35. For example, if a viewer wants to sit farther from the screen than the presenter anticipated — or even if her eyes are closer together than the average viewer’s — she can move the images on the screen closer together so that her focal point does not appear to be too far inside the screen. In other words, whereas three-dimensional presentations once included only one configuration of images, which people in different situations perceived differently, the '664 patent attempts to describe a method for presenting a number of different configurations in the hope of allowing different people to perceive essentially the same thing. Id.

[36]*36Against this general background, the Court turns to the terms of the '664 patent. Construction of a patent’s claims — “the portion[s] of the patent document that definef ] the scope of the patentee’s rights” — “is exclusively within the province of the court.” Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370, 372, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d 577 (1996). Courts should interpret a word in a claim according to its “ordinary and customary meaning,” i.e., “the meaning that the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention.” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312-13 (Fed.Cir.2005) (quoting Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed.Cir.1996)). “[T]he person of ordinary skill in the art is deemed to read the claim term not only in the context of the particular claim in which the disputed term appears, but in the context of the entire patent, including the specification.” Id. at 1313. “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.

The context provided by the entire patent read as a whole, combined with the record of the patent’s proceedings in the Patent and Trademark Office (the so-called “prosecution history”), constitutes “intrinsic evidence” of a term’s meaning. Id. at 1317. Courts may also consider “extrinsic evidence,” e.g., dictionaries and treatises, “as long as those sources are not used to contradict claim meaning that is unambiguous in light of the intrinsic evidence.” Id. at 1324. Courts are admonished, moreover, not to construe claims in a fashion that “contribute[s] nothing but meaningless verbiage to the definition of the claimed invention.” Harris Corp. v. IXYS Corp., 114 F.3d 1149, 1152 (Fed.Cir. 1997). Moreover, the Court should not construe a claim to protect only examples recited in the specification, which may merely be illustrative. Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1323 (“[W]e have expressly rejected the contention that if a patent describes only a single embodiment, the claims of the patent must be construed as being limited to that embodiment.”).

Under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶6, where a claim expresses a means “for performing a specified function,” but does not specify a structure, “such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.” The construction of a “means-plus-function limitation” under § 112, ¶ 6 has two steps: (1) “determine the claimed function”; and (2) “identify the corresponding structure in the written description that performs that function.” JVW Enterprises, Inc. v. Interact Accessories, Inc., 424 F.3d 1324, 1330 (Fed.Cir.2005). Use of the words “means” creates a presumption that the means-plus-function limitation applies. Sage Products, Inc. v. Devon Industries, Inc., 126 F.3d 1420, 1427 (Fed.Cir.1997).

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Related

Tomita Technologies USA, LLC v. Nintendo Co.
182 F. Supp. 3d 107 (S.D. New York, 2016)
Tomita Technologies USA, LLC v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.
594 F. App'x 657 (Federal Circuit, 2014)

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Bluebook (online)
855 F. Supp. 2d 33, 2012 WL 612487, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24985, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tomita-technologies-usa-llc-v-nintendo-co-nysd-2012.