Sunstone Information Defense, Inc. v. F5, Inc.

Background

Sunstone brought a patent-infringement action against F5 and Capital One Financial Corporation. The court states that Sunstone accused F5 of infringing several cybersecurity-related software patents, including U.S. Patent Nos. 9,122,870, 10,230,759, and 10,958,682. The patents concern technology for preventing malicious applications or “bots” from attacking or exposing information through communications between servers and client devices. The case against Capital One was stayed.

The order addressed claim construction, which is the court’s determination of the meaning and scope of disputed patent-claim language. The court explained that claim terms generally receive their ordinary and customary meaning to a person of ordinary skill in the relevant field, considered in the context of the claims, specification, and patent-examination history. The court also determined that it could decide indefiniteness at the claim-construction stage. A claim term is indefinite when its scope cannot be understood with reasonable clarity.

Agreed Constructions

The parties agreed that:

- The phrase in claim 11 of the ’870 Patent concerning estimating the locations of rendered features and functions includes estimating locations of features and functions hidden from display by the client device, using the plain and ordinary meaning. - “Hard information” in claim 7 of the ’870 Patent means “transactional text and/or data displayed by a client device.” - The corresponding phrase in claim 7 of the ’682 Patent concerning estimating the location of a rendered feature or function includes estimating the location of a feature or function hidden from display by the client device, using the plain and ordinary meaning.

Disputed Terms

The court found “transactional information” indefinite. Sunstone argued for its plain and ordinary meaning and contended that “hard information” was a subset of “transactional information.” F5 argued that the term was indefinite. The court concluded that the patent specification did not clarify the term’s boundaries or explain how transactional information differed from hard information or other information. The court also found that Sunstone’s alternative description—information sent between a server and client to achieve the purpose of a connection—was too ambiguous and open-ended.

The court also found “presentation information” indefinite. Sunstone argued that it included “soft information,” which the parties agreed meant information describing how hard information is to be displayed by a client device. The court concluded that the patent materials did not define the boundaries of presentation information. It also rejected Sunstone’s alternative construction because it relied on the already-indefinite term “transactional information” and could make some claims circular.

Because “presentation information” was indefinite, the court found “estimating a label of the presentation information” indefinite as well. The court separately found “soft information” indefinite because the parties agreed that its meaning rose or fell with “presentation information.”

Finally, the court found “estimating a utilization of a codeword set” indefinite. The court reasoned that the patent materials indicated a codeword set was a type of hard information, while hard information was treated as a subset of transactional information. Because transactional information was indefinite, the court concluded that this related term was indefinite too.

Disposition

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued the claim constructions and stated that the order terminated Docket Number 120. The opinion is a claim-construction ruling; it does not state that the court decided whether F5 infringed the patents or enter a final infringement judgment.