RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Inc

Background

The order concerns two remaining defendants in a consolidated patent proceeding: Adobe and Dalim. RAH Color Technologies accused Adobe of infringing four patents and Dalim of infringing three patents. The three disputed terms appear in the ’870 and ’444 patents, which share a specification and concern systems for distributing and controlling color reproduction at multiple networked sites.

The court held a claim construction hearing on January 21, 2021. Claim construction is the court’s legal interpretation of the words used in patent claims. The parties identified three terms for construction: “sites,” “appear substantially the same,” and “interactive conference.” The opinion also notes that prior Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions did not construe any of those terms.

“Sites”

RAH argued that “sites” should have its plain and ordinary meaning to a person of ordinary skill in the art or, alternatively, should mean “devices in a network.” Adobe and Dalim argued that it should mean “physical locations.” The court construed “sites” as “locations.”

The court reasoned that the claims refer to sites having color devices or computers and describe communication between sites through a network. The claims and specification therefore treated sites as locations on a network, while treating devices as things located at those sites. The court rejected “devices in a network” because the patents repeatedly distinguished devices from sites.

The court declined to add the word “physical.” It found no claim-language requirement that sites be physical or occupy different physical places. The court also noted that defense counsel acknowledged that one office could contain multiple sites.

“Appear substantially the same”

RAH proposed the plain and ordinary meaning or, alternatively, “appear largely, but not necessarily exactly, the same.” Dalim argued that the phrase was indefinite. A claim is indefinite when the patent documents fail to inform a skilled person, with reasonable certainty, about the scope of the invention.

The court concluded that the phrase is not indefinite and requires no special construction. It found that “appear” refers to human perception of color, which the specification explains can be measured and quantified. The specification also describes calibration, verification, color-error measurements, tolerances, confidence intervals, and standard deviations for assessing whether colors sufficiently match.

Based on that guidance, the court found that a person of ordinary skill in the art could determine whether colors appear substantially the same without requiring exact mathematical identity. The court therefore rejected Dalim’s indefiniteness argument.

“Interactive conference”

RAH proposed the plain and ordinary meaning or “communications between two or more persons using a two-way electronic communication system.” Adobe proposed a more detailed definition requiring a meeting over a telecommunications network in which participants could simultaneously view, comment on, or mark up documents in real time.

The court construed “interactive conference” as “a meeting between two or more persons conducted over a telecommunications network.” It agreed that the phrase involves a meeting between two or more people and that “interactive” requires the participants to communicate with one another. The patent’s discussion of conferencing involved negotiating about colors and conferring about color corrections.

The court declined to require simultaneous or real-time viewing, commenting, or marking up of documents. It found that Adobe had not identified claim or specification language imposing those requirements. The court also found that other references Adobe cited concerned different aspects of the patented system or did not establish a real-time requirement.

Disposition

The court entered the claim construction order and: (1) construed “sites” as “locations”; (2) concluded that “appear substantially the same” is not indefinite and does not require construction; and (3) construed “interactive conference” as “a meeting between two or more persons conducted over a telecommunications network.”