Following a jury trial where the jury found that Defendant Microsoft had infringed upon Z4's patents and that the patents were not invalid, Microsoft moved for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial. The district court denied Microsoft's motions and Microsoft appealed. 
| This patent litigation case involved two patents directed to the problem of software piracy. Defendant challenged the district court's construction of three limitations of the patents-in-issue: the "user" limitation and the "automatic" and "electronic" limitations. The Federal Circuit found that the district court had incorrectly construed the "user" limitation because the district court's construction was inconsistent with the plain language of the claims and also with the specification. Notwithstanding the Federal Circuit's modification of the claim construction, the jury's finding of infringement was still supported by substantial evidence and Defendant's arguments to the contrary failed because they also ignored the plain language of the claims. Regarding the "automatic" and "electronic" limitations, these limitations did not exclude any user interaction. The claims were silent as to how the electronic or automatic registration processes were to be initiated, but they clearly contemplated a user choice as to whether the registration would be automatic or manual. Therefore, the district court correctly refused to construe the "automatic" and "electronic" limitations as excluding all user interaction. Defendant also contended that the jury's finding of infringement was not supported because a "product key" could not be an "authorization code" or a "password." The Federal Circuit disagreed, finding that substantial evidence supported the finding that the "product key" could be an "authorization code." Defendant further contended that a reasonable jury could have concluded that the patents were invalid by anticipation. The Federal Circuit rejected this argument because substantial evidence (including an email that was improperly withheld from discovery until only a day before trial) supported a finding that the asserted prior art did not actually work for its intended purpose. Defendant requested a new trial based on three erroneous jury instructions. The Federal Circuit rejected each of these arguments. The trial court's instruction that an inventor's testimony of conception of an invention must be corroborated by a single document was not relevant because Microsoft had never relied on the testimony of an individual inventor. The trial court's refusal to provide specific instructions regarding the burden of proof of invalidity was not error as no caselaw required this instruction. Finally, Defendant was not entitled to a new trial based on the trial court's obviousness instruction in light of the KSR decision because Defendant failed to identify any arguments or evidence establishing a prima facia case for obviousness. Finally, Defendant was not entitled to a new trial on damages because there was no evidence that the jury had improperly calculated damages by including foreign sales. Absent evidence that foreign sales arguments and instructions were presented to the jury, the court must assume that the jury properly confined its damages analysis to the instructions it was given. |