Fresh From the Bench: Latest Precedential Patent Case

CASE OF THE WEEK

Freshub, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2022-1391, -1425 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 26, 2024)

In the Court’s only precedential patent opinion this week, the Court affirmed a jury finding that use of Amazon’s “Alexa” products to create a shopping list did not infringe appellant Freshub’s U.S. Patent No. 9,908,153 directed to certain voice-processing technology.  The Court also denied Freshub’s appeal of the district court’s denial of its motion for a new trial based on allegedly prejudicial statements by Amazon’s counsel, and denied Amazon’s cross-appeal concerning the district court’s rejection of its inequitable conduct defense.

On the question of infringement, the Court’s decision deferred to the jury’s latitude in its understanding and application of an unconstrued claim term.  The claims of the ’153 patent are directed to a system that translates a user’s spoken words into text, which must then “identify an item corresponding to the text” and “add the identified item to a list associated with the user.”  The Court’s discussion on appeal turned on the presence of the “identify an item” limitation, and Freshub argued that substantial evidence did not support the jury’s finding of non-infringement.  For example, the evidence showed that when a user instructed Alexa to “add bananas to my shopping list,” the software would typically extract the keyword “bananas” to add to the list, which Freshub argued necessarily showed the presence of the “identify an item” limitation.

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Editors:

Nika Aldrich, IP Litigation Group Leader, Schwabe

Jason A. Wrubleski, Shareholder