Order Regarding Discovery Letter Briefs, InteraXon Inc. v. NeuroTek, LLC, Case No. 15-cv-05290 (Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore)
InteraXon, maker of a mind reading meditation aid, is not required to read the patentee's mind to figure out his infringement contentions.
Licensing negotiations between InteraXon and defendants fell apart sometime in the spring of 2015, prompting InteraXon to file a declaratory judgment suit for non-infringement and invalidity against defendants NeuroTek, LLC, MindWaves, Ltd. and Dr. Jonathan Cowan, an inventor of U.S. Patent No. 5,983,129. Dr. Cowan then filed a counterclaim for infringement.
Dr. Cowan accuses InteraXon's Muse device, as well as "specialized software for developers (including the Software Development Kit, Muse IO, Muse Player, Muse Lab)" of infringing his patent. The Muse device is a personal meditation assistant that includes a headband with sensors that measure "brain signals." The headband communicates via Bluetooth with an app. It also adjusts the sounds a user hears while meditating based on how "active" the user's brain is.
Magistrate Judge Westmore found that Dr. Cowan's infringement contentions failed to meet the standards of Patent Local Rule 3-1(c), which requires a chart "identifying specifically where each limitation of each asserted claim is found within each Accused Instrumentality." Dr. Cowan's contentions—spanning only two pages and asserting 19 claims—failed the specificity requirement for a number of reasons, including failing to identify specific software functions and stating that the elements of various dependent claims were met by "a combination of the answers." The contentions also did not separately address the Muse device and accused software, which the Court found "are not functionally identical and there is no showing that they infringe on each claim in the same way." Magistrate Judge Westmore also threatened to strike Dr. Cowan's claim of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, but noted that he could file for leave to amend if further discovery revealed a basis for asserting the doctrine.
The Court gave Dr. Cowan 14 days to revise his contentions. For his sake, the next round of contentions had better leave InteraXon with a clear mental picture of his infringement theory.
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