01
Dec
By Eric Schweibenz
Further to our October 26 post, on November 24, 2009, the International Trade Commission issued the public version of its opinion determining that there has been no violation of Section 337 in Certain Flash Memory Controllers, Drives, Memory Cards, and Media Players and Products Containing Same (Inv. No. 337-TA-619).

By way of background, this investigation was instituted on December 12, 2007, based on the complaint of SanDisk Corp. (“SanDisk”).  According to the opinion, several of the named respondents either settled out of the investigation or defaulted.  The remaining respondents include:  Phison Electronics Corp., Silicon Motion Inc., Skymedi Corp., Power Quotient International Co., Ltd., Power Quotient International (HK) Co., Ltd., Syscom Development Co., Ltd., PQI Corp., Kingston Technology Corp., Kingston Technology Company, Inc., MemoSun, Inc., Transcend Information Inc., Transcend Information Maryland, Inc., Imation Corp., Imation Enterprises Corp., Memorex Products, Inc., Apacer Technology Inc., Apacer Memory America, Inc., Dane Memory S.A., Deantusaiocht Dane-Elec TEO, Dane-Elec Corp. USA, LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc., and LG Electronics, Inc.

On April 10, 2009, ALJ Charles E. Bullock issued an Initial Determination (“ID”) finding no violation of Section 337 had occurred in the importation into the U.S., the sale for importation, or the sale within the U.S. after importation of certain flash memory controllers, drives, memory cards, and media players and products containing same, in connection with claims 17, 24, and 30 of U.S. Patent No. 6,763,424 (the ‘424 patent) and claim 8 of U.S. Patent No. 7,137,011 (the ‘011 patent).  The ID further determined that SanDisk satisfied the domestic industry requirement for both the ‘424 and ‘011 patents.  See our April 14 post for more details.  On August 24, 2009, the ITC issued a notice determining to review in part the ID.  See our August 25 post for more details.  On October 23, 2009, the ITC issued a notice determining that there was no violation of Section 337.

In its opinion, the Commission determined to reverse ALJ Bullock’s finding that claim 17 of the ‘424 patent does not cover single-page updates.  Specifically, the Commission held that “the claim language as a whole, the specification, and Federal Circuit precedent compel construing the claim term ‘updating pages of original data within any of the metablock component blocks less than all the pages within the block’ to mean ‘updating fewer than all the pages of a block within the metablock’ and specifically including single-page updates.”

The Commission also reversed ALJ Bullock’s finding that the claim term “reading and assembling data from the first and second plurality of pages” as recited in claim 20 of the ‘424 patent excludes the so-called table method as disclosed in Figure 12.  More particularly, the Commission found that “the ALJ’s claim construction improperly limits the scope of the claim term ‘reading and assembling’ to one embodiment (reverse-read method) disclosed in the ‘424 patent while ignoring a second embodiment (table method) disclosed in the patent.  Accordingly, we reverse the ALJ’s claim construction and find that the claim term ‘reading and assembling’ encompasses both the reverse-read and table methods.”

In its opinion, the Commission affirmed ALJ Bullock’s finding that the accused products do not infringe the asserted claims of the ‘424 patent and “because we find no infringement of the ‘424 patent, we decline to reach the issue of invalidity.”



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