Vocalife LLC v. amazon.com, Inc. ( 2022 )


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  • Case: 21-1937   Document: 73     Page: 1     Filed: 07/28/2022
    NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
    United States Court of Appeals
    for the Federal Circuit
    ______________________
    VOCALIFE LLC,
    Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant
    v.
    AMAZON.COM, INC., AMAZON.COM LLC,
    Defendants-Appellants
    ______________________
    2021-1937, 2021-1984
    ______________________
    Appeals from the United States District Court for the
    Eastern District of Texas in No. 2:19-cv-00123-JRG, Chief
    Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap.
    ______________________
    Decided: July 28, 2022
    ______________________
    ALFRED ROSS FABRICANT, Fabricant LLP, Rye, NY, ar-
    gued for plaintiff-cross-appellant. Also represented by
    ENRIQUE WILLIAM ITURRALDE, PETER LAMBRIANAKOS,
    VINCENT J. RUBINO, III.
    JOSEPH R. RE, Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP,
    Irvine, CA, argued for defendants-appellants. Also repre-
    sented by ALAN GRAYSON LAQUER; COLIN B. HEIDEMAN, Se-
    attle, WA.
    ______________________
    Case: 21-1937     Document: 73      Page: 2     Filed: 07/28/2022
    2                           VOCALIFE LLC   v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
    Before MOORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit
    Judges.
    HUGHES, Circuit Judge.
    Defendants-Appellants Amazon.com, Inc. and Ama-
    zon.com LLC appeal from the United States District Court
    for the Eastern District of Texas’ denial of Amazon’s motion
    for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of noninfringe-
    ment. Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant Vocalife LLC cross-ap-
    peals two of the district court’s summary judgment grants.
    Because there is no substantial evidence to support in-
    fringement of the “plurality of configurations” limitation,
    we reverse the district court’s denial of Amazon’s motion
    for judgment as a matter of law, vacate the jury verdict,
    and dismiss Vocalife’s cross-appeal as moot.
    I
    Vocalife owns U.S. Patent No. RE 47,049, which is di-
    rected to methods and systems for “enhancing acoustics of
    a target sound signal received from a target sound source,
    while suppressing ambient noise signals.” ’049 patent,
    2:6–8. Claim 1 of the ’049 patent covers one such method
    and recites a number of steps, including “providing a mi-
    crophone array system comprising an array of sound sen-
    sors positioned in a linear, circular, or other configuration”
    and “determining a delay . . . wherein said determination
    of said delay enables beamforming for said array of sound
    sensors in a plurality of configurations.” 1 Id., 21:27–22:3
    (claim 1). We refer to the latter step as the “plurality of con-
    figurations” limitation.
    1  “Beamforming” refers to a signal processing tech-
    nique by which the disclosed microphone array can focus
    on a sound signal coming from a particular direction in-
    stead of sound signals from other directions. See ’049 pa-
    tent, 5:65–6:2, 6:17–23.
    Case: 21-1937      Document: 73       Page: 3   Filed: 07/28/2022
    VOCALIFE LLC   v. AMAZON.COM, INC.                           3
    Vocalife filed a patent infringement suit against Ama-
    zon, accusing certain Amazon Echo products of infringing
    the ’049 patent. At the summary judgment stage, the dis-
    trict court granted summary judgment that, among other
    things, absolute intervening rights under 
    35 U.S.C. § 252
    apply to certain Echo products and Vocalife was not enti-
    tled to damages for pre-suit induced infringement. The
    case proceeded to trial. Amazon moved for judgment as a
    matter of law (JMOL) of noninfringement after the close of
    evidence. The district court denied JMOL of no induced in-
    fringement but granted JMOL of no direct or contributory
    infringement by Amazon and no infringement under the
    doctrine of equivalents. Thus, the only infringement issue
    for the jury to decide was whether Amazon induced users
    of the Echo to literally infringe the patent. After the six-day
    trial concluded, the jury returned a verdict finding that
    Amazon did. Amazon renewed its motion for JMOL of no
    induced infringement, which the district court again de-
    nied.
    Both parties appeal. Amazon appeals the denial of its
    JMOL motion. Vocalife cross-appeals the two summary
    judgment grants. We have jurisdiction under 
    28 U.S.C. § 1295
    (a)(1).
    II
    We review JMOL denials under the law of the regional
    circuit, here the Fifth Circuit, which reviews such denials
    de novo. Raytheon Co. v. Indigo Sys. Corp., 
    895 F.3d 1333
    ,
    1338 (Fed. Cir. 2018). JMOL “is appropriate only where
    ‘the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelm-
    ingly in favor of one party that the court concludes that
    reasonable jurors could not arrive at a contrary verdict.’”
    
    Id.
     (quoting Orion IP, LLC v. Hyundai Motor Am., 
    605 F.3d 967
    , 973 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit law)).
    Thus, “[w]e affirm a district court’s denial of [JMOL] when
    there was substantial evidence to support the jury’s ver-
    dict.” 
    Id.
     (citing Power-One, Inc. v. Artesyn Techs., Inc.,
    Case: 21-1937     Document: 73      Page: 4    Filed: 07/28/2022
    4                           VOCALIFE LLC   v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
    
    599 F.3d 1343
    , 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit
    law)).
    III
    Vocalife contends it provided substantial evidence that
    the Echo infringes the “plurality of configurations” limita-
    tion. At trial, Vocalife’s expert, Joseph McAlexander, testi-
    fied that the Echo determines a delay as part of its
    beamforming process using inputs from the incoming tar-
    get sound signal in conjunction with certain infor-
    mation—beam coefficients—stored on the device. See, e.g.,
    Appx6326–27        at    617:19–618:3;    Appx6340–42     at
    631:2–633:19; Appx6427–28 at 718:10–719:22; Appx6429
    at 720:10–17. As Mr. McAlexander testified, Amazon cal-
    culated the pre-loaded beam coefficients via computer sim-
    ulation during development of the Echo and pre-loaded
    those coefficients onto the Echo devices during manufac-
    turing. See, e.g., Appx6326–27 at 617:3–618:3;
    Appx6390–91 at 681:24–682:7. Mr. McAlexander further
    testified that the Echo’s delay determination enables
    beamforming for a plurality of configurations because the
    software code running on the Echo can be utilized across
    different Echo products with different microphone array
    configurations. See, e.g., Appx6297–98 at 588:21–589:14;
    Appx6339–40 at 630:20–631:1.
    None of this testimony, however, supports the conclu-
    sion that the Echo products infringe the ’049 patent. The
    testimony does not show that the delay determination oc-
    curring on a given Echo device enables beamforming for a
    plurality of configurations, as claim 1 requires. If anything,
    Mr. McAlexander’s testimony suggests that this determi-
    nation enables beamforming for only the specific micro-
    phone array configuration on that specific device. 2
    2   At oral argument, Vocalife hypothesized that
    “there could be” multiple configurations on a given Echo
    Case: 21-1937      Document: 73       Page: 5   Filed: 07/28/2022
    VOCALIFE LLC   v. AMAZON.COM, INC.                           5
    Mr. McAlexander repeatedly described the pre-loaded
    beam coefficients as being specific to a “particular” micro-
    phone array. See, e.g., Appx6325–26 at 616:14–617:2 (Am-
    azon’s computer simulation is “a construct by which they
    take the instantiation of a particular microphone array or-
    ganized in a certain fashion, arranged in a certain archi-
    tecture” to create beam coefficients “that are associated
    with [ ] that particular kind of a structure.”); Appx6326 at
    617:7–18 (Amazon “take[s] a specific designed architecture
    with a physical arrangement of the microphones” to pro-
    vide the beam coefficients, which “go[] into the [ ] initial
    construct of how the beams will be formed once they are
    instantiated in the accused device.”); Appx6327 at
    618:6–11 (The beam coefficients “include the understand-
    ing of how that arrangement of the architecture is,” as “you
    have to define the microphone array first.”); Appx6437 at
    728:8–14 (Amazon determines the beam coefficients “based
    on an architectural arrangement or a layout of the sound
    sensors” and “that calculation is already built into the co-
    efficients that are then programmed into this device.”).
    While it is undisputed that Amazon pre-loads certain beam
    coefficients onto each Echo device, Vocalife provides no ev-
    idence showing that the coefficients loaded onto a given
    Echo device enable beamforming for a variety of micro-
    phone configurations, as opposed to only the configuration
    device “in the situations where not all of the microphones
    are operating or certain microphones aren’t receiving the
    sound or performing as designed.” Oral Argument at
    20:00–20:09, https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/de-
    fault.aspx?fl=21-1937_07072022.mp3. This contention,
    which appears nowhere in Vocalife’s briefing, comes too
    late. See Henry v. Dep’t of Justice, 
    157 F.3d 863
    , 865 (Fed.
    Cir. 1998) (declining to consider argument raised for the
    first time at oral argument). In any event, Vocalife cites no
    evidence—nor have we found any—showing that these hy-
    pothetical configurations exist.
    Case: 21-1937    Document: 73      Page: 6    Filed: 07/28/2022
    6                          VOCALIFE LLC   v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
    of that particular device. Mr. McAlexander’s conclusory,
    unsupported testimony that the Echo meets the “plurality
    of configurations” limitation, see Appx6338 at 629:2–14, is
    otherwise insufficient to support the jury’s infringement
    verdict, see, e.g., Yoon Ja Kim v. ConAgra Foods, Inc.,
    
    465 F.3d 1312
    , 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (affirming JMOL of
    noninfringement where patentee’s expert offered only con-
    clusory, unsupported testimony).
    Because there is no substantial evidence showing that
    any delay determination occurring on a given Echo device
    enables beamforming for a microphone array “in a plurality
    of configurations,” we conclude that Vocalife failed as a
    matter of law to prove that the Echo infringes claim 1 of
    the ’049 patent. We reverse the district court’s denial of
    JMOL of no induced infringement and vacate the jury ver-
    dict. This moots Vocalife’s cross-appeal, and we accordingly
    dismiss as moot Appeal No. 2021-1984.
    REVERSED IN PART, DISMISSED IN PART
    Costs to Defendants-Appellants.