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JMOL order filed in Southwest EFuels v. 3T

By Michael C. Smith

Southwest Efuel Network, L.L.C. v. Transaction Tracking Technologies, Inc., 2:07cv311 (Ed. Tex., Jan. 13, 2010)
Judge: T. John Ward
Holding: Defendant's Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law GRANTED
It took Judge Ward just a day to get the parties a written order memorializing his oral ruling granting defendant's JMOL yesterday morning.  In his order, Judge Ward first concluded that "[t]he undisputed evidence shows that the accused 3T software product does not infringe
the asserted method claims. On cross-examination, Plaintiff?s technical expert conceded that the
accused product does not perform the ?sending? step of subpart (f) of independent claim 1. On
cross-examination, Plaintiff?s technical expert conceded that the accused product does not
perform the ?sending,? ?calculating,? and ?transmitting? steps of subparts (a), (b), and (c)1 of
independent claim 6."  (Ed. note: Claims 1 and 6 were the only independent claims asserted).  The Court went on to conclude that "Plaintiff failed to introduce any evidence that the Defendant actually performed the claimed method. Plaintiff failed to introduce any evidence that any customer of the Defendant actually used the claimed method in the Defendant?s accused product."
Key to Judge Ward's holding was the Federal Circuit's recent holding in the Lucent case that based upon the facts presented in that case the evidence was ?just barely sufficient? to permit the jury to find direct infringement. Lucent, 580 F.3d at 1318.  "In this case," he wrote, "Southwest provided far less evidence on infringement than the plaintiff in the Lucent case. There, the plaintiff presented evidence that the defendant had instructed its customers to use the accused products in an infringing way, and there were instruction manuals distributed by the defendant showing such use. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiff provided no direct or circumstantial evidence of infringement for a reasonable jury to find infringement."
Judge Ward went on to grant JMOL as to the claims of contributory, inducing, and willful infringement.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on January 13, 2010 (boomark / email).