Vehicle IP, LLC v. General Motors Corp.

306 F. App'x 574
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedJanuary 6, 2009
Docket2008-1259
StatusUnpublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 306 F. App'x 574 (Vehicle IP, LLC v. General Motors Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vehicle IP, LLC v. General Motors Corp., 306 F. App'x 574 (Fed. Cir. 2009).

Opinions

PROST, Circuit Judge.

Vehicle IP (“VIP”) holds the rights to U.S. Patent No. 6,535,743 (the “'743 patent”), which covers various aspects of a mobile navigation system. VIP sued General Motors, OnStar, Célico, and Networks in Motion (collectively, “Defendants”) in the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin for infringing the '743 patent. The district court granted Defendants’ motions for summary judgment of noninfringement as to all asserted claims. Vehicle IP, LLC v. Gen. Motors Corp., 578 F.Supp.2d 1107,1120-21 [576]*576(W.D.Wis.2008). For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

The '743 patent, which is entitled “System and Method for Providing Directions Using a Communications Network,” describes a method and apparatus for providing turn-by-turn directions to a mobile unit. Claim 1 is representative of the claim language at issue:

A system for providing directions, comprising:
a server coupled to a communication network, the server operable to determine directions from an origination location to a destination location and to communicate the directions using the communication network, wherein the directions comprise a plurality of segments, each segment separated from an adjacent segment by a separator signal and comprising a command and a notification region defined by a plurality of notification coordinates; and a mobile unit coupled to the communication network remote from the server, the mobile unit operable to receive the communicated directions, the mobile unit further operable to present automatically a particular segment of the directions to a user if the location of the mobile unit substantially corresponds to á notification coordinate defining the notification region associated with that segment.

'743 patent col.31 11.19-36 (emphasis added). The phrase “a notification region defined by a plurality of notification coordinates” is at the heart of the dispute between the parties and is found in each independent claim in the '743 patent.

During claim construction, the district court first held that a “plurality” is used in the ordinary sense of “requiring a minimum of two of something.” Vehicle IP, 578 F.Supp.2d at 1115. This construction is not debated by any party.1 The court went on to hold that (1) in accordance with its ordinary meaning, a coordinate is “any of a set of numbers that provides the position of a point,” (2) notification coordinates are “any of a set of numbers used to locate the position of a point in a direction segment,” and (3) a notification region is a “location defined by two or more coordinates that provide the position of points in near proximity to, but not including, the position of an upcoming maneuver point.” Id. at 1115-17.

On appeal, VIP argues that the district court misconstrued those terms, and that even under the district court’s erroneous construction Defendants’ navigation systems infringe the '743 patent. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

II. DISCUSSION

As claim construction is a matter of law, we review a district court’s claim construction without deference. Cybor Corp. v. FAS Techs., Inc., 138 F.3d 1448, 1454 (Fed.Cir.1998) (en banc). We evaluate a district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement de novo as well. 02 Micro Int’l Ltd. v. Monolithic Power Sys., Inc., 467 F.3d 1355, 1369 (Fed.Cir. 2006).

A

We turn first to the district court’s construction of the term “coordinate.” Al[577]*577though not explicitly included in its definition, in discussing the term the court found that “[f]or something to be a coordinate it must have a partner so that together the coordinates can provide the location of a point.” Vehicle IP, 578 F.Supp.2d at 1117. The court therefore found that a “mere numeric value like 200 feet[ ] cannot be a coordinate without a partner.” Id.

Defendants’ navigation systems operate by downloading the coordinates for an upcoming maneuver point (sometimes called a “driving event”) and either distance or time values. In the case of the Célico and Networks in Motion (“Célico”) system, the server sends various information to a cell phone, including a “max-instruction distance,” the coordinates of the maneuver point, and the speed of travel. The cell phone uses some of this information to calculate a warning distance, which is then compared to the max-instruction distance to determine when the user should receive the next instruction. Both the warning distance and the max-instruction distance are scalars; in other words, they are what the district court called “numeric values.” Similarly, the GM OnStar® (“GM”) system downloads driving event coordinates and up to three distance or time offsets, each of which is also a scalar. In part because it found that numeric values like those downloaded by Defendants’ systems cannot be coordinates, the district court held that Defendants did not inflinge the '748 patent. Vehicle IP, 578 F.Supp.2d at 1117-18.

VIP argues that the patentees did not limit the term “coordinate” in the '743 patent, and therefore the term must be “broadly defined.” And while VIP agrees that the term should be construed according to its ordinary meaning, VIP does not believe the court’s construction reflects that meaning. Instead, VIP argues that the ordinary meaning of a coordinate is “any one of a set of numbers used in specifying the location of a point on a line, in space, or on a given plane or other surface.” VIP presses us to find that this construction allows for a numeric distance offset “so long as that offset specifies the location of a point.”

Regardless of whether the district court correctly identified the term’s ordinary meaning, however, we agree with the district court’s conclusion. The '743 patent claims and the prosecution history indicate that the patentees did not contemplate scalar values serving as notification coordinates.

The term “coordinate” appears twice in the language of independent claims 1, 23, 35, and 56. Although the first mention of the term is as a plurality (“notification coordinates”), the second time, the term is used in the singular: a direction “segment” is presented when “the location of the mobile unit substantially corresponds to a notification coordinate defining the notification region.” In the '743 patent, the mobile unit’s location is identified using a GPS device. '743 patent col.2 11.64-eol.3 1.1. To compare a notification coordinate to the mobile unit’s location, as required by the claims, the notification coordinate necessarily must be of the same kind or type as the mobile unit location coordinates. The location of the mobile unit is expressed in terms of latitude and longitude, and cannot “substantially correspond” to a scalar value, such as 500 meters. No meaningful comparison between the two is possible. The plain language of the claims precludes the possibility that a coordinate can be a scalar.

The prosecution history lends further support to the conclusion that a scalar cannot serve as a “coordinate” as that term is used in the '743 patent. On March 14, 2001, the Examiner rejected claims 23 and 35 as being anticipated by U.S.

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306 F. App'x 574, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vehicle-ip-llc-v-general-motors-corp-cafc-2009.