Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit LLC
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:17-cv-05928
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Cellspin Soft v. Fitbit, Judge Rogers ordered more briefing on alleged inventive combinations in defendants’ patent-invalidity summary-judgment motion.
Cellspin Soft, Inc. was required to provide additional briefing concerning its asserted inventive combinations; the order concerned defendants’ pending motions for summary judgment in the related patent cases.
What happened
Cellspin Soft, Inc. sued Fitbit, Inc. and other defendants in related patent cases. The defendants asked for summary judgment—that is, a ruling without a trial—that the patents were invalid under federal patent law.
The court said Cellspin was relying on combinations of elements as alleged inventive concepts. It ordered Cellspin to identify each asserted combination and explain what the combination added beyond the individual elements. Cellspin had to file the additional briefing by February 24, 2021.
The court did not decide the patent-validity issue in this order. Judge Yvonne Rogers stated that failing to identify additional inventiveness would be treated as acceptance that the combination’s conventionality depended on the conventionality of its individual elements.
The detailed version
- Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit LLC · No. 4:17-cv-05928
- Yvonne Rogers
- Feb. 17, 2021
Background
The caption lists Cellspin Soft, Inc. as plaintiff and Fitbit, Inc., Moov, Inc., Nike, Inc., Under Armour, Inc., Fossil Group, Inc., Garmin International, Inc., Nikon Americas, Inc., and other defendants in related cases. The court held a hearing on defendants’ motions for summary judgment seeking a ruling that the patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Issue Addressed
Cellspin proposed inventive concepts based on combinations of elements that the opinion says were otherwise addressed individually. The court identified the relevant inquiry under Federal Circuit precedent as whether the individual elements were “well-understood, routine, or conventional” and whether their ordered combination added something beyond what was already present when the elements were considered separately.
Order
The court ordered Cellspin to submit additional briefing identifying each combination it asserted as an inventive concept and explaining what the combination added beyond consideration of the individual concepts. The briefing was due February 24, 2021. The court stated that it would order additional briefing addressing the substance of the allegations if necessary. It also stated that failure to identify additional inventiveness based on a combination would be treated as Cellspin’s acceptance that the combination’s conventionality depended on the conventionality of its constituent concepts.
This order did not grant or deny the motions for summary judgment and did not decide whether the patents were invalid. It required further briefing on the pending motions.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.