Acacia Media Technologies Corp. v. New Destiny Internet Group

FURTHER CLAIM CONSTRUCTION ORDER; ORDER FINDING CLAIMS TERMS INDEFINITE AND CLAIMS INVALID

I. BACKGROUND

In its July 12, 2004 Claim Construction Order, the Court reached a tentative conclusion that the term “sequence encoder” as used in claims 1, 7, 17, 18, 32 and 33 of the ’702 patent is indefinite. This tentative conclusion of indefiniteness was based on the Court’s findings from the intrinsic evidence that the term: (a) is never used in the written description; (b) does not appear in the drawings; (c) has no plain meaning, and (d) cannot be inferred to be a “time encoder,” since a time encoder could be described in a dependent claim as a limitation of a sequence encoder.

In its July 12, Order, the Court also tentatively concluded that, based on the intrinsic evidence, the term “identification encoder,” as used in claims 1, 5, 6, 17, 19, 27 and 31 of the ’702 patent may be insolubly ambiguous because the term: (a) has no plain meaning; (b) ■ is not defined in terms of what the apparatus is but rather how it functions; and (c) has no meaning to one of ordinary skill in the art, such that this person would understand the scope and bounds of the claim, when read in light of the…