Finjan, LLC v. Qualys Inc.

Background

Finjan, Inc. brought a patent-infringement action against Qualys Inc., alleging infringement of seven patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 8,677,494; 6,154,844; 8,141,154; 6,965,968; 7,418,731; 7,975,305; and 8,225,408. The patents generally concern computer-network security, including scanning network content for malicious code, controlling access to cached content under multiple policies, and protecting computers from dynamically generated malicious code.

The order addressed claim construction, which is the court’s process for determining the meaning and scope of patent claims. The court considered the claims, patent specifications, prosecution history, the parties’ briefing, and their arguments at a claim-construction hearing. The order did not decide whether Qualys infringed the patents.

Claim Constructions

For the ’408 Patent, the court construed “instantiating, by the computer, a scanner for the specific programming language” to mean “generating or requesting a scanner that can scan the programming language by providing a generic scanner instance with language-specific data, rules, or both.” The court concluded that the patent describes a generic scanner adapted to different programming languages through language-specific rules, while also using “instantiating” in its ordinary sense of creating a particular scanner instance.

For the ’968 Patent, the court construed “dynamically generating a policy index” to mean “adding allowability information to a policy index in response to user requests for cached and non-cached content.” The court explained that the policy index itself may exist before a user request, but that allowability or non-allowability information is added in response to user requests. The court gave “known to be allowable relative to a given policy” and “allowable relative to a given policy” no additional construction, rejecting Qualys’s proposal that the terms require sending digital content to a web client.

The court construed “a memory storing a cache of digital content” as “memory storing previously requested and retrieved digital content.” It rejected Finjan’s broader formulation because, in the context of the patent, the term “cache” refers to content stored for later access after an earlier request and retrieval.

For the ’731 Patent, the court construed “incoming files from the Internet” as “files requested by an intranet computer from the Internet.” The court distinguished this claim language from claims concerning outgoing traffic and concluded that claim 1 concerns files requested by an intranet computer before delivery to that intranet.

For the ’844 Patent, the court construed “web client” as “an application on the end-user’s computer that requests a downloadable from the web server.” It left the remainder of the limitation—concerning when a web server deploys the downloadable so web clients can access it—with its plain and ordinary meaning.

For the ’154 Patent, the court construed “a content processor” as “a content processor on the protected computer.” The court declined to decide whether the term also requires processing modified content because that issue was being considered on appeal and the Federal Circuit’s interpretation would govern. The court declined to provide a further construction for “security computer,” but stated that the term must refer to a computer capable of inspecting content to determine whether it may safely be invoked by the content processor.

Means-Plus-Function Issues

The court considered whether 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 6—which can limit a claim term stated as a function to the corresponding structure disclosed in the patent—applied to “receiver” and “transmitter.” Because neither term uses the word “means,” there was a presumption that paragraph 6 did not apply. The court found that the claims and patent figures treated receivers and transmitters as distinct hardware components, and Qualys did not overcome that presumption.

The court therefore held that § 112, paragraph 6 does not apply to “receiver” in the ’494, ’968, and ’154 Patents, or to “transmitter” in the ’968 and ’154 Patents.

Disposition

The court adopted the listed claim constructions, declined additional construction where the identified disputes were resolved, and ordered that docket number 65 be terminated. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers signed the order on June 11, 2020.