This morning, the Federal Circuit two precedential opinions, one nonprecedential opinion, and two nonprecedential orders. Both precedential opinions come in patent cases. One comes in an appeal of a judgment of invalidity, and the other comes in an appeal of an award of attorneys’ fees. The nonprecedential opinion comes in an appeal from the Court of Federal Claims in a government contract case. One order grants a motion to vacate a judgment, while the other is a dismissal. Here are the introductions to the opinions and first order and a link to the dismissal.
Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. MediaPointe, Inc. (Precedential)
This case involves U.S. Patent No. 8,559,426 and its child, U.S. Patent No. 9,426,195, which address systems and methods for efficiently routing streamed media content over the Internet. Each describes an “intelligent distribution network” that centrally manages requests for streamed media from many geographically dispersed users to mitigate bandwidth problems inherent in transmitting large volumes of data. AMHC, Inc. owns the patents, and MediaPointe, Inc. is its subsidiary. We refer to them together as MediaPointe.
Akamai Technologies, Inc. brought suit in the Central District of California against MediaPointe, seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringement of both patents. MediaPointe counterclaimed for infringement, and Akamai then sought a declaratory judgment of invalidity. At the claim-construction stage of proceedings, the district court held that certain claims using “optimal” and “best” language were invalid for indefiniteness. For the remaining asserted claims, the district court granted Akamai summary judgment of noninfringement. First, it excluded, as untimely presented, key portions of MediaPointe’s technical expert’s testimony, without which MediaPointe could not reasonably establish infringement. Second, the court ruled that, even with the expert testimony, the record entitled Akamai to summary judgment of noninfringement.
We hold that the judgment of invalidity was correct in view of the intrinsic record and that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment of noninfringement even considering the expert testimony. Accordingly, without reaching the exclusion issue, we affirm.
EscapeX IP, LLC v. Google LLC (Precedential)
EscapeX IP, LLC (“EscapeX”) appeals an award to Google LLC (“Google”) of attorneys’ fees as well as the denial of EscapeX’s motion to amend a judgment. We affirm.
Wolf Creek Railroad LLC v. United States (Nonprecedential)
In 2023, Wolf Creek Railroad LLC sued the United States Army Joint Munitions Command (the Army) in the United States Court of Federal Claims (Claims Court) for compensation for alleged breach of a contract with the Army, including breach of an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Wolf Creek brought its action under the Contract Disputes Act (CDA), 41 U.S.C. §§ 7101(7), 7104(b)(1), invoking the Claims Court’s jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1491(a)(1)–(2). As relevant here, the Claims Court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the Army contract alleged was not one to which Wolf Creek was a party or under which the Army owed Wolf Creek a contractual duty. Wolf Creek Railroad, LLC v. United States, No. 23-1684, 2024 WL 1270189 (Fed. Cl. Mar. 26, 2024) (CFC Decision). We affirm.
Crowley Government Services, Inc. v. United States (Nonprecedential Order)
In this bid protest case, Crowley Government Services, Inc. appeals from the United States Court of Federal Claims’s rejection of its challenge to certain terms in a request for proposal. In light of the subsequent removal of those terms from the proposal, the parties jointly move to vacate the underlying judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss the bid protest as moot.