Army of Citation Footnotes Crouching in a Field of Jargon Fails to Withstand Summary Judgment

Traxcell Techs., LLC v. Sprint Commn’s Co. et al

Before Prost, O’Malley, and Stoll.  Appeal from the Eastern District of Texas.

Summary:  A patentee’s extensive citations to evidence failed to avoid summary judgment of noninfringement because the patentee never explained the relevance of this evidence.

Traxcell sued Sprint and Verizon for infringing several patents.  The district court found certain claims of one patent indefinite and then held on summary judgment that the remaining asserted claims of all patents were not infringed.  Traxcell appealed.

The Federal Circuit described Traxcell’s infringement theories for one patent as “an alphabet soup of approaches” and held that Traxcell failed to explain how any of them satisfied the district court’s claim construction.  “Traxcell didn’t link its citations to the claims and left its evidence unexplained.”  For a second patent, the court found that “Traxcell didn’t particularize [its] conclusory assertions with specific evidence and argument” that would show how the accused devices performed the claimed functions.  Though Traxcell cited numerous documents, “it failed to link those documents to the [accused technology] or explain how those documents support its infringement theory.”  For a third patent, Sprint and Verizon offered specific evidence of noninfringement that Traxcell responded to with nothing “but broad and conclusory scattershot assertions.”  Because “Traxcell fail[ed] to provide the critical link from evidence to infringement,” the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment.

Editor: Paul Stewart

Written by: Brandon G. Smith & Jeremy Anapol