- QPRC
- May 13, 2019
- 2 min read
CLAIM CONSTRUCTION MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Disputed Claim A
The Parties’ Positions
Plaintiff submits: Its proposed constructions are those issued by the Court in Huawei6. The issue of whether the core of a multi-core processor satisfies the limitations as previously construed is an issue of infringement, not of claim construction. Dkt. No. 48 at 11–13.
In addition to the claims themselves, Plaintiff cites the following extrinsic evidence to support its position: Thornton Decl.7 ¶¶ 39–40, 42–44 (Plaintiff’s Ex. F, Dkt. No. 48-7 at 14–17).
Defendant responds: These terms need to be construed to clarify that the CPU that experiences the claimed voltage or frequency change is the CPU that experiences the claimed clock or instruction state (stopped or not stopped). This matters because multicore processors have multiple CPUs—each core is a CPU. Dkt. No. 50 at 8–12.
In addition to the claims themselves, Defendant cites the following extrinsic evidence to support its position: Thornton Decl. ¶¶ 42–44 (Defendant’s Ex. H, Dkt. No. 50-9 at 15–17); Diefendorff, Power4 Focuses on Memory Bandwidth: IBM Confronts IA-64, Says ISA Not Important, Microdesign Resources: Microprocessor Report (Oct. 6, 1999) (Defendant’s Ex. I, Dkt. No. 50-10); L. Hammond, The Stanford Hydra CMP, IEEE MICRO (2000) (Defendant’s Ex. J, Dkt. No. 50-11).
Plaintiff replies: The issue of whether each core in a multi-core processor is a CPU is not an issue of claim construction. Rather, Defendant’s proposed construction is simply an attempt to improperly resolve infringement at the claim-construction stage. Dkt. No. 53 at 4–5.
Analysis
The issue in dispute distills to whether the Court should construe “multi-core processor.” Given that “multi-core processor” is not a term in the Asserted Patents, the Court declines at this stage to rule on whether any claim reads on a multi-core processor.
To begin, the construction in Huawei was directed to resolving the dispute over whether the processor and processing-unit terms of the claims necessarily exclude an operating system because of statements made during prosecution of the ’061 Patent. Huawei, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108040, at *20–21. There was not a substantial dispute regarding whether the processor terms of the claims referred to a “CPU” and whether the processing-unit terms referred to the “computing portion of CPU.” Id. at *17–26. Specifically, Huawei did not construe the processor terms in the context of any dispute over whether the scope of the terms includes or excludes multi-core processor The Court understands that the processor and processing-unit terms in the claims refer to a CPU and the computing portion of a CPU, respectively. The Court further understands that recitals of “the” or “said” processor or processing unit/device in a claim plainly refer to the same processor or processing unit/device, respectively. That said, the Court declines to rule as an issue of claim construction whether every multi-core processor is necessarily comprised of multiple processors. Whether a particular accused processor or processing unit satisfies the processor / processing-unit limitations is a factual issue of infringement, not an issue of claim construction.
Accordingly, and as explained in Huawei,8 the Court hereby construes the terms as follows:
• “computer processor” means “CPU”;
• “processor” means “CPU”;
• “central processor” means “CPU”;
• “processing unit” means “computing portion of CPU”; and
• “processing device” means “computing portion of CPU.”
Case No. 2:18-cv-00192