In Omega Patents, LLC v. CalAmp Corp., [2018-1309] (April 8, 2019), the Federal Circuit affirmed the judgment of no invalidity, affirmed-in-part, reversed-in-part, vacated-in-part, remanded the judgment as to direct infringement, and vacated the remainder of the judgment and remanded for a new trial on indirect infringement, compensatory damages, willful infringement, enhanced damages, and attorney’s fees, in a case involving U.S. Patent Nos. 6,346,876, 6,756,885, 7,671,727, and 8,032,278 on multi-vehicle compatible systems that can remotely control various vehicle functions such as remote vehicle starting.

After a trial, a jury found all asserted claims to be not invalid and infringed. The jury also found that CalAmp willfully infringed a valid patent and awarded Omega $2.98 million in compensatory damages, which the district court trebled for willfulness, awarded attorney’s fees to Omega, and added damages for post-verdict sales and pre-judgment interest for a total of $15 million with an on-going royalty rate of $12.76 per unit.

Although CalAmp appealed the construction of several claim terms, the Federal Circuit found that these terms had no impact on the prior art actually introduced at trial, and CalAmp had failed to identify to the district court any other prior art that would be impacted by the claim construction ruling. Thus, the Federal Circuit declined CalAmp’s invitation to speculate as to how additional prior art may have been rendered irrelevant under the court’s claim construction. While CalAmp’s challenge to the district court’s claim construction was preserved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 51 for purposes of challenging the jury instructions, CalAmp failed to satisfy the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 46 by not seeking admission into evidence of, or at least specifically identifying, the additional prior art.

On the issue of direct infringement, several of the claims required “a transmitter and a receiver for receiving signals from said transmitter.” The Federal Circuit, however, found that the evidence at trial only showed that the “transmitter” transmits signals to a “receiver” on a cell tower, which can then relay that information to CalAmp’s servers, and the “receiver” receives signals from a “transmitter” on the cell tower. The Federal Circuit agreed that CalAmp did not provide all of the elements of the system, as was entitled to judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on direct infringement of these claims.

On the issue of induced infringement, Omega argued that CalAmp’s customers directly infringed when they used CalAmp’s products. The Federal Circuit noted that for purposes of infringement, a party must put the invention into service, i.e., control the system as a whole and obtain benefit from it, and said there was evidence from which the jury could infer that customers controlled and used the system and received the required benefits. Based on the record, the Federal Circuit conclude that this theory does not warrant setting aside the jury verdict.

The induced infringement of some of the claims depending on the construction of “vehicle device,” which the district court refused to construe, defaulting to the ordinary meaning. The Federal Circuit said that when the parties raise an actual dispute regarding the proper scope of the claims, the court, not the jury, must resolve that dispute. The Federal Circuit added that the court is not absolved of this duty to construe the actually disputed terms just because the specification of the patent defines the term. Even if the parties had agreed to the construction, the Federal Circuit said that the district court was still obligated to give that construction to the jury in its instructions. The Federal Circuit said: in the absence of guidance in the form of proper claim construction, the jury lacked a yardstick by which to measure the arguments and evidence on this issue and assess whether Omega’s infringement theory was a valid one. In particular, the Federal Circuit could not discern if the jury found infringement of the claims at issue based upon a theory of infringement inconsistent with the proper construction. Therefore, the Federal Circuit set aside aside the jury’s verdict of infringement and ordered a new trial.

On the issue of induced infringement, CalAmp argued that the jury’s verdict could not be sustained because the verdict form given to the jury (proposed by CalAmp) did not provide written questions on the issue of inducement. CalAmp argued that the absence of such questions on induced infringement precluded the jury from awarding damages on that basis, but the Federal Circuit said that one cannot use the answers to special questions as weapons for destroying the general verdict. The Federal Circuit concluded that induced infringement was properly before the jury and, thus, CalAmp was not entitled to JMOL of no induced infringement on that basis.

However, CalAmp also complained that the district court’s exclusion of testimony as to CalAmp’s state of mind substantially prejudiced CalAmp’s ability to present its defense for indirect infringement. The Federal Circuit found that this exclusion deprived CalAmp of the opportunity to support its defense that there was no inducement because it reasonably believed it did not infringe the patents at the time CalAmp launched the products at issue. The Federal Circuit vacated the jury’s findings as to indirect infringement and remand for a new trial.

On the issue of damages, the Federal Circuit found that although the infringement of the one claim that was sustained, this was not enough to support a damage award based upon all of the products, and thus the Federal Circuit vacated the compensatory damage award.

On the issue of enhanced damages for willful infringement, the jury was asked whether it had found CalAmp willfully “infringed a valid patent,” without specifying which patent or patents or which claim or claims were willfully infringed. Based on the vacation of several findings of infringement the Federal Circuit could not determine which patents or claims, so the finding of willfulness had to be vacated as did the resulting enhanced damages and attorney’s fees award by the district court, both of which were explicitly based on the willful infringement finding.

Takeaway

There are many lessons to learn from this case, including insisting on a claim construction of disputed terms and being extremely careful drafting jury verdict forms.