CAFC affirms ND Cal in Nuance v. ABBYY

Of the case


This case involves optical character recognition
(“OCR”) technology. Nuance Communications Inc. (“Nuance”)
sued ABBYY USA Software House, Inc., ABBYY
Software, Ltd., ABBYY Production LLC, and Lexmark
International, Inc. (collectively, “ABBYY”) in the United
Stated District Court for the Northern District of California.
Although Nuance asserted eight patents in its complaint,
before trial Nuance narrowed its case and
ultimately only tried three patents: U.S. Patent Nos.
6,038,342 (“’342 patent”), 5,381,489 (“’489 patent”), and
6,742,161 (“’161 patent”). The jury returned a verdict of
non-infringement and judgment was entered against
Nuance. Nuance appeals the judgment, arguing that a
new trial on the ’342 patent is warranted because the
district court improperly adopted a dictionary definition
for disputed claim limitations in the ’342 patent. Nuance
also contends that it was denied due process when the
district court entered final judgment against Nuance as to
all of its patents, even those that Nuance chose not to
assert at trial, and thus seeks remand for a second trial
on the untried patents. For the reasons stated below, we
affirm the district court’s rulings.