Novel Aspect of Invention Determined in Favor of Datascape in Patent Dispute Against Sprint
Thursday, April 17, 2014

Judge Clarence Cooper adopted Special Master Gale R. Peterson’s report in its entirety ruling in favor of Datascape, Inc., in denying the summary judgment motion of Spring Spectrum, L.P, and Sprint Solutions, Inc. (collectively “Sprint”) for Invalidity and Non-Enablement of the claims at issue in the five asserted patents [U.S. Patents Nos. 5,742,845, 5,905,908, 6,366,967,6,684,269, and 6,745,259].  Michael Cicero previously posted an article on the claim construction order entered in this case on February 5, 2013. 

The key dispute between the parties over the Special Master’s report is set forth on page 3 of the Order:  “The parties disagree about whether a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been familiar with [telephones communicating over an open network] in 1995 and with how to connect the telephones to the open network.”  The Court found this aspect of the dispute to be fact intensive, requiring denial of summary judgment.  The Court disagreed with the supposition of Sprint that the novel aspect of the patent was the devices to be connected. Rather, “[t]he novel aspect of the patent is the implementation and usage of extended open network protocols, which facilitate input/output operations with a non-standard I/O devices.”

The decision is Datascape, Inc. v. Spring Spectrum, L.P, and Sprint Solutions, Inc., No. 1:07-CV-0640-CC (N.D. Ga. March 31, 2014), written by United States District Judge Clarence Cooper.

 

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