The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today affirming a district court's grant of summary judgment of non-infringement for Meta/Facebook against claims by Mirror Worlds Technologies that Facebook's Timeline and Newsfeed features infringed three of its data storage patents.

U.S. Patent Nos. 6,006,227; 7,865,538; and 8,255,439 are directed to "methods for storing, organizing, and presenting data in time-ordered streams (i.e., in a chronological manner) on a computer system," according to the opinion. Mirror Worlds alleged infringement via Facebook's "backend" computer systems related to its Timeline, Activity Log and Newsfeed features. The "Multifeed system" serves Facebook's News Feed and the "Timeline backend system" -- consisting of the "TimelineDB" and "Timeline Aggregator" -- serves the Timeline and Activity Log features.

While the district court rejected Facebook's argument that the patents were invalid as ineligible for patenting under Section 101, it concluded that "there was no infringement as a matter of law because, on several grounds, the evidence would not allow a reasonable finding that all claim limitations were satisfied by the accused features of Facebook's service."

In its analysis on appeal, the CAFC first addressed Mirror Worlds' contention that the district court erred in overlooking evidence that showed "at least a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the accused system satisfied" certain limitations. The evidence in question was testimony from Mirror World's expert, parts of which the district court excluded. The testimony Mirror Worlds objected to being excluded included screenshots references to source code "supposedly demonstrating that [Facebook's] Timeline and Multifeed systems met the 'glance view' limitation." But the CAFC said "the screenshots were unauthenticated and from third-party websites" and agreed with the district court's assessment that it is "plainly unreasonable for a technical expert to rely on unauthenticated, undated screenshots in forming an opinion" and that the screenshots were not independently admissible. The exclusion of such evidence was not an abuse of discretion, said the CAFC.

The opinion further rejected Mirror Worlds' assertion that its expert's testimony about source code proved the accused systems met the "glance view" limitation and said Facebook's expert testimony to the contrary was based on "uncontroverted evidence". The CAFC thus affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement as to the '538 and '439 patents.

Turning to the remaining '227 patent, the CAFC rejected Mirror Worlds' claim construction argument and ultimately upheld the district court's construction of "data unit" as "an item of information." Mirror Worlds argued that "search query" and information not of direct user interest should be excluded from the meaning of data unit but the CAFC said "[t]here is no sound basis for concluding that a search query, or information contained within a search query (like search criteria), falls outside the broad term 'data unit.'" The CAFC pointed to the specification as underscoring "the propriety of giving the term its ordinary breadth" as it describes the "main stream" as "storing '[e]very document created and every document sen[t] to a person or entity,'" and says that "[a] document can contain any type of data, including but not limited to pictures, correspondence, bills, movies, voice mail and software programs."

The CAFC also agreed with the district court that a POSITA "would not understand 'data unit' to refer only to those units of data that happen to interest a particular user at a particular time." The opinion further pointed to Mirror Worlds' prosecution history, which included an opposition to an indefiniteness challenge in which Mirror Worlds told the examiner: "The definitions of 'data unit' in both the specification and prosecution history do not include the narrowing limitation that forms the basis of [the] indefiniteness challenge -- i.e., 'an item of information that is of direct user interest in the user's timeline.'" While the opinion noted the statement was made in connection with the broadest-reasonable-interpretation claim construction standard, "it is consistent with the broad 'data unit' 'definition[]' provided by Mirror Worlds in prosecuting the '227 patent's application...and with the most natural reading of Mirror Worlds' remarks indicating that 'all data units' are 'of significance to the user (in the broadest sense),'" said the court.

Finally, the CAFC rejected Mirror Worlds' argument that, "even under the claim construction of 'data unit' adopted by the district court, the evidence sufficed to avoid summary judgment of non-infringement regarding the Timeline system (which serves the Timeline and Activity Log features)." The CAFC said Facebook provided "focused concrete evidence" to dispute Mirror Worlds' contention that its Timeline DB met the limitation in question, while Mirror World's evidence amounted to unsupported "generalization" and "speculation." The district court's opinion was thus affirmed and Facebook's cross-appeal as to invalidity based on Section 101 was dismissed.