Specification Requiring 3,000+ Hours of Experimentation Does Not Enable Claims

The court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment of invalidity as to plaintiff's online analytical processing cube ("OLAP") patents for lack of enablement. "Relying on [the inventor's] own representations, [defendant] calculates that he spent between 3,159 and 4,212 hours just to reduce the disparate databases limitations to practice. [Defendant] argues that this amount of experimentation is undue, representing between one and a half and two years of labor. . . . Working at an aggressive pace of fifty hours a week during fifty weeks of a year still only amounts to 2,500 hours of work during that period, far below the minimum of 3,159 hour of work that [the inventor] concedes having spent experimenting to enable the disparate databases features. A more reasonable pace of forty hours a week for fifty weeks of the year would result in 2,000 hours of work during the year. At that pace, [the inventor's] own calculations lead to the conclusion that enabling the disparate databases features would require a person of ordinary skill in the art to experiment for eighteen to twenty-five months to enable the features. This extended period of experimentation weighs heavily in favor of a finding of invalidity. . . . Overall, the [In re Wands, 858 F.2d 731,737 (Fed. Cir. 1988)] factors weigh heavily in favor of invalidity due to lack of enablement."

Vasudevan Software, Inc. v. MicroStrategy, Inc., 3-11-cv-06637 (CAND October 17, 2013, Order) (Seeborg, J.)