Judge Richard G. Andrews recently construed several claims in U.S. Patent No. 7,801,802, “Method, system and computer program product for facilitating an auction behavior and automatic bidding in an auction.” Walker Digital, LLC v. Google, Inc., et al., C.A. No. 11-311-RGA (D. Del. May 22, 2013). The Court adopted the parties’ agreed upon the construction of the following terms, as follows:
“bid” agreed to mean “an offer from or on behalf of a bidder that includes an offered price for the good or service being auctioned”
“the highest bid in the auction is not from the bidder” agreed to mean “the highest offer received for the item is not from the bidder”
“determin[ing] that the rule is satisfied; determin[ing] that the highest bid in the auction is not from the bidder; and plac[ing] the bid” agreed to require that “‘determining’ steps must be performed before ‘placing’ step.”
The Court construed the disputed claims as follows:
“auction” construed to mean “a public or private sale in which goods or services of a seller may be sold to a bidder through a bidding process. An auction consists of one sale.”
“bid generator” construed to mean “a computer program or part of a computer program that bids for a bidder in amounts above the initial price or another bidder’s bid.”
The Court declined to construe three claims, finding that the defendants failed to overcome the strong presumption that claims that do not use the word “means” are not means-plus-function claims.
Walker Digital, LLC v. Google, Inc., et al., C.A. No. 11-311-RGA (D. Del. May 22, 2013).
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