This is part of a series of articles discussing recent orders of interest issued in patent cases by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
In ACQIS, LLC v. EMC Corporation, No. 1:14-cv-13560, Judge Burroughs granted EMS's renewed motion for attorneys' fees but reduced the fees award from $5,864,734.72 requested by EMC to $4,044,180.15.
EMC's motion for fees stems from the Court's claim construction ruling issued in December 2017. After the order was entered, EMC requested that ACQIS dismiss its infringement case arguing that the Court's claim constructions precluded infringement as a matter of law. ACQIS declined to dismiss, and in February 2021 the Court granted EMC's motion for summary judgment of non-infringement, which the Federal Circuit affirmed. On EMC's motion, the Court issued an order declaring the case exceptional but denying fees with direction to submit additional supporting documentation.
EMC sought $5,864,734.72 in attorneys' fees for 6,967.4 hours, dating from the date of the claim construction ruling. The renewed motion was supported by an excel spreadsheet of more than 1,800 individual time entries, but many of the time entries were block billed, with single time entries covering time spent on multiple tasks. The Court imposed a twenty percent global reduction on the attorneys' fees for block billing on the basis that the Court could not evaluate whether time spent on individual tasks was "excessive, duplicative, or otherwise unreasonable." Judge Burroughs also reduced the entire fee award by an additional 5% to account for "excessive" time spent on summary judgment and Daubert motions. The Court also denied attorneys' fees for work completed in the six weeks following the claim construction decision, because, in the Court's view, that constituted a reasonable amount of time for the parties to evaluate their litigation positions in view of claim construction.
With respect to the billing rates, the Court relied on the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Report of the Economic Survey for evaluating the reasonableness of the attorneys' billing rates. EMC's counsel billed time at a blended rate for partners, non-partner attorneys, and paralegals of $842 per hour, which the Court concluded were comparable to the AIPLA billing rates for the third quartile of partners and associates in the Boston metro area. Similarly, the Court found the paralegals' hourly rate of $340 was comparable or lower than rates for paralegals awarded in other complex patent litigations.
In Arena IP, LLC v. New England Patriots, LLC, No. 1:23-cv-13006, Judge Joun granted a motion to dismiss after finding that the asserted patent was not directed to patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Arena originally filed suit in the Southern District of Texas, which sua sponte transferred the case to the District of Massachusetts, after which the parties submitted supplemental briefing in view of First Circuit precedent.
Arena alleged that the Patriots infringed its single asserted patent by placing "a matrix of communications nodes throughout Gillette Stadium (a sports and entertainment venue) to provide communications capacity for and data network access by hand held wireless devices being used by spectators located throughout the venue." Here, the Court applied the Supreme Court's two-part Alice test, finding that Arena's patent was not directed to patent-eligible subject matter.
As to Alice Step One, the Court found that "the claims are directed to [the abstract idea of] providing wireless communications access in a public venue, through the conventional use of existing wireless data repeaters—and nothing more." In particular, the Court rejected arguments that certain claims recite "concrete, tangible components" or are limited to a particular context, i.e., sports and entertainment venues, as failing to alter the character of the claimed invention so as to render it non-abstract.
And as to Alice Step Two, the Court found that the claims are abstract because they recite only generic computer components and functions. Put differently, because the asserted patent's "claims disclose the idea that a system already in existence—i.e., a generic server and wireless repeaters, used in their ordinary and conventional manner to extend data communication via wireless access points—can be used on a large scale, in a public venue such as a sports stadium," it "does not constitute an inventive concept."
Because Arena's asserted patent did not survive either step of the Alice test, the Court found the patent invalid as not directed to patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and thus granted the Patriots' Motion to Dismiss.
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