iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Do Not Infringe Rembrandt's Secure Computer Booting Patents

Following claim construction, the court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment that it did not infringe plaintiff's secure bootstrap architecture patent either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents. "This action concerns the manner in which [defendant's] iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices boot up. . . . [The patent-in-suit] describes techniques for booting a computer system in a secure manner. . . . [Defendant] contends that because the accused products require human intervention to recover, they cannot infringe the asserted claims. [Plaintiff] responds that [defendant's] products do recover automatically once the user has plugged the device into a computer and affirmatively initiated the recovery process and because the devices enter 'recovery mode' automatically (although, again, they cannot recover without human interaction). [Plaintiff's] argument seeks a second bite at claim construction by trying to ignore the automatic limitation. . . . Tellingly, no claim element reads on these instances of human interaction. . . . [Defendant's] recovery procedure that required human intervention could be equivalent to automatic recovery even though the former failed to address all of the problems solved by the latter, that would vitiate the automatic limitation present in the properly construed claims. Plainly, the inventors did not view these as equivalent when they expressly described previous efforts that required human interaction as 'inferior to the present invention.'"

Rembrandt Patent Innovations, LLC et al v. Apple, Inc., 3-14-cv-05094 (CAND June 10, 2016, Order) (Alsup, J.)