The Federal Circuit has affirmed summary judgement for Coca-Cola Co. in a patent infringement case involving personalized products.
Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations, LLC (“Rothschild”) sued Coca-Cola Co. for infringing US Patent No. 8,417,377, for a “System and Method for Creating a Personalized Consumer Product.
On appeal, Rothschild challenged the district court’s interpretation of Claim 11 of the patent, which recites:
A beverage dispenser comprising:
at least one compartment containing an element of a beverage;
at least one valve coupling the at least one compartment to a dispensing section configured to dispense the beverage;
a mixing chamber for mixing the beverage;
a user interface module configured to receive an[] identity of a user and an identifier of the beverage;
a communication module configured to transmit the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage to a server over a network, receive user generated beverage product preferences based on the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage from the server and communicat[e] the user generated beverage product preferences to controller;
and the controller coupled to the communication module and configured to actuate the at least one valve to control an amount of the element to be dispensed and to actuate the mixing chamber based on the user gene[r]ated beverage product preferences.
(Emphasis added by Federal Circuit.)
At issue on appeal was whether the claimed communication module must be configured to perform its steps in the order in which they are written—namely:
(1) “transmit the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage to a server over a network”;
(2) “receive user generated beverage product preferences based on the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage from the server”; and
(3) “communicat[e] the user generated beverage product preferences to controller.”
The district court said yes — the communication module must be configured to do these things in that particular order — and therefore granted summary judgment of noninfringement.
The parties didn’t dispute that, under this interpretation, Coca-Cola didn’t literally infringe via its accused Freestyle dispensers.
The Coke Freestyle is a touch-screen machine launched in 2009 that features different Coca-Cola drink products as well as custom flavors, allowing users to select from mixtures of flavors. In 2018, Coke launched a mobile app to go with the machines.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit agreed that the claimed communication module must be configured to perform its steps in the order in which they are written.
Said the court:
Although a particular order of method steps is typically not required unless the steps actually recite one, “such a result can ensue when the method steps implicitly require that they be performed in the order written.” Altiris, Inc. v. Symantec Corp., 318 F.3d 1363, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (cleaned up). We apply a two-part test for determining if steps that do not otherwise recite an order “must nonetheless be performed in the order in which they are written.” Id. “First, we look to the claim language to determine if, as a matter of logic or grammar, they must be performed in the order written.” Id. “If not, we next look to the rest of the specification to determine whether it directly or implicitly requires such a narrow construction. If not, the sequence in which such steps are written is not a requirement.”
As the district court observed, in the first step, the communication module is configured to transmit—to a server— “the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage.”
In the second step, the communication module is configured to receive—from the server—“user generated beverage product preferences based on the identity of the user and the identifier of the beverage” (i.e., “based on” the very things that, in the first step, the communication module is configured to transmit to the server).
This use of “based on,” said the Federal Circuit, strongly indicates that the first step precedes the second.
As to the third step — “communicat[e] the user generated beverage product preferences to controller,” – the district court viewed it as “send[ing] the product preferences received by the communication module in [the second step] to the controller.”
The Federal Circuit noted that the district court
also observed that this particular order accords with the specification, which not only contains language and figures describing this order, but also contains nothing suggesting Rothschild’s contrary reading of claim 11.
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