Fed. Circ. Says Media Patent in Capital One Suit Is Indefinite
Firm lawyers Robert Angle, Dabney Carr, George Somerville and Doug Salyers were mentioned in a September 4 Law360 article and a September 8 Reuters article (and Robert in a September 4 Bloomberg BNA article) about a Federal Circuit ruling in favor of Capital One Financial Corp. that a patent asserted by Media Rights Technologies Inc. includes a so-called means-plus-function term, or one written in a way that describes a means for performing a certain function. Such claims are indefinite if they do not include “corresponding structure” that performs the function, and the appeals court found that Media Rights’ patent failed the test, the article stated.
Every claim of the patent describes a “compliance mechanism” for preventing illegal copying or sharing of media content protected by law. The Federal Circuit said that the use of that phrase rendered the patent invalid as indefinite because it did not explain how four separate functions are performed. Media Rights Technologies had originally alleged that Capital One infringed its patent on its customer-accessed website.