Amazon.com, Inc. v. Personal Web Technologies, LLC

Background

This order arose from multidistrict patent litigation involving PersonalWeb Technologies, LLC’s infringement claims concerning four patents. The litigation included PersonalWeb’s claims against Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon Web Services, Inc., as well as separate claims against Amazon customers, including Twitch Interactive, Inc. The patents concerned the customers’ use of Amazon’s CloudFront and Simple Storage Service in connection with downloading files from S3.

On August 16, 2019, the court issued a claim-construction order. Claim construction is the court’s interpretation of disputed words in a patent claim. The court construed “unauthorized or unlicensed,” as used in claim 20 of the ’310 patent, to mean “not compliant with a valid license.” The court had rejected PersonalWeb’s argument that “unauthorized” and “unlicensed” should have different meanings, finding that the patent used the words interchangeably.

The Motion

PersonalWeb moved to clarify or supplement the claim-construction order. It argued that “licensed” should mean “valid rights to content,” based on an earlier order from another court involving some of the patents. PersonalWeb said it needed clarification to determine whether the court intended a narrower meaning involving a license instrument, such as a written or oral agreement. It stated that, if the court adopted the narrower interpretation, it would withdraw its technical expert’s infringement report and dismiss the case while preserving its appellate rights.

Amazon argued that the motion was effectively a motion for reconsideration of an issue already decided and that PersonalWeb had not complied with the local rules for reconsideration. Amazon also argued that PersonalWeb was trying to insert another court’s construction of a different claim term into this case.

Court’s Analysis

The court first held that the motion was procedurally proper. It explained that there is nothing inherently improper about asking a court to clarify a claim construction and that courts may revisit claim interpretations as their understanding of the technology develops.

The court nevertheless declined to clarify or supplement its order. It reasoned that PersonalWeb had consistently argued during claim-construction proceedings that “license” was a narrower form of authorization and had proposed that the disputed phrase mean “not permitted or not permitted under a license.” In the court’s view, PersonalWeb’s new request was an attempt to regain the broader meaning it had previously sought for “unauthorized,” rather than a genuine request to resolve an unclear ruling.

The court also found that PersonalWeb had been aware of Amazon’s proposed construction for months and had adequate opportunities to argue that the wording was unclear. The court further determined that PersonalWeb was not asking for construction of the stand-alone term “licensed/unlicensed” as used in an asserted claim. Instead, it was asking the court to adopt language from another court’s ruling addressing different claims and a different dispute.

The court separately declined to address the effect of its claim construction on PersonalWeb’s infringement arguments. It noted that the motion did not develop that issue and that a party generally does not seek judicial approval of its own expert report; an opposing party must instead move to strike evidence it believes is inadmissible.

Disposition

Judge Beth Labson Freeman denied PersonalWeb’s motion to clarify or supplement the claim-construction order. The court left in place the construction that “unauthorized or unlicensed” means “not compliant with a valid license,” and stated that the infringement-analysis issue was not properly before it.