The United States District Court for the District of Utah granted the motion of Rothwell Figg client, FYE (a.k.a. Trans World Entertainment) and several other defendants, for entry of final judgment against James L. Driessen and Marguerite A. Driessen. The same order denied Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration of its Memorandum Decision and Order on a limited claim construction process and Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgment. Plaintiffs have thirty days from the Court’s order to file a notice of appeal, if they are going to appeal.
This case began when Plaintiff (originally just James L. Driessen) sued Defendants, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Target Corporation, Best Buy Co. and FYE for infringement of three patents (U.S. Patent No. 7,003,500; 7,636,695 and 7,742,993) as a result of Defendants’ purported manufacture, use, sale and offer for sale of a digital music card called the “Platinum Music Pass.”
The Platinum Music Pass was manufactured by Sony and sold by various retailers. The case involved multiple rounds of briefing on motions to dismiss, which were granted without prejudice with leave to re-plead. In Plaintiff’s Third Amended Complaint Plaintiff accused the retailer defendants of directly infringing five independent claims—claims 1 and 10 of the ‘500 patent and claims 1, 6 and 24 of the ‘993 patent.
Defendants filed motions to reinstate two motions for summary judgment that they had briefed much earlier in the case (when the first motion to dismiss was pending), a motion for summary judgment for lack of written description, and a motion for summary judgment of indefiniteness. The Court issued an order granting the pending motions in their entirety. On the indefiniteness motion, which concerned whether there was sufficient structure disclosed in the ’500 patent for claim 1 (and claims 2-7), the Court found that under the Supreme Court’s new standard for indefiniteness there is not. On the written description motion, which concerned whether there was sufficient disclosure in the original specification for the terms “payment message,” “selling computer,” and “authorization message” which appear in claim 10 of the ‘500 patent, as well as, inter alia, claims 1, 6 and 24 of the ‘993 patent, the Court found that there was not sufficient disclosure, rejecting Plaintiff’s inherency argument.
In the Court’s Order, the Court explained its denial of Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration on grounds that it “specifically accounted for the primary relevant change in the law that had occurred between oral argument and the issuance of the Memorandum decision & Order—the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2012.” The Court explained its granting of Defendants’ motion for entry of final judgment on grounds that “the Court’s [] decision resolved all the causes of action in this case and entry of final judgment is proper.”
FYE/Trans World Entertainment was represented in this case by Rothwell Figg attorneys Steven Lieberman and Jenny Colgate, as well as by Brent Hatch of Hatch, James & Dodge, P.C.
