Mformation Techs., Inc. v. Research in Motion Ltd.; RIM wins

Research-in-Motion wins in Mformation Techs., Inc. v. Research in Motion Ltd. :


This appeal concerns Mformation’s challenges to the
district court’s grant of JMOL of no infringement





Because the district court correctly found that there was
no legally sufficient evidentiary basis on which a reasona-
ble jury could have found that BlackBerry infringes the
asserted claims of the ’917 patent, we affirm.


The expert gets bashed


Mformation’s expert based his infringement opinion on his
understanding that the claims do not require a connection
to be established between the server and the wireless
device before transmission.

Based on his mistaken view, Mformation’s expert testified that (...)



Order of steps within a method claim arises


We now turn to the issue of whether claim 1 of
the ’917 patent requires that a connection be completely
established before transmission.
As a general rule, “[u]nless the steps of a method [claim] actually recite an
order, the steps are not ordinarily construed to require one.”
Interactive Gift Express , Inc. v. Compuserve Inc.,
256 F.3d 1323, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2001)(citation omitted).
However, a claim “requires an ordering of steps when the
claim language, as a matter of logic or grammar, requires
that the steps be performed in the order written, or the
specification directly or implicitly requires” an order of
steps. TALtech Ltd. v. Esquel Apparel, Inc., 279 F. App’x974, 978 (Fed. Cir. 2008);
see also Function Media, LLC v. Google, Inc., 708 F.3d 1310, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2013)