Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 1 Filed: 07/28/2022
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
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VOCALIFE LLC,
Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant
v.
AMAZON.COM, INC., AMAZON.COM LLC,
Defendants-Appellants
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2021-1937, 2021-1984
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Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Texas in No. 2:19-cv-00123-JRG, Chief
Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap.
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Decided: July 28, 2022
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ALFRED ROSS FABRICANT, Fabricant LLP, Rye, NY, ar-
gued for plaintiff-cross-appellant. Also represented by
ENRIQUE WILLIAM ITURRALDE, PETER LAMBRIANAKOS,
VINCENT J. RUBINO, III.
JOSEPH R. RE, Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP,
Irvine, CA, argued for defendants-appellants. Also repre-
sented by ALAN GRAYSON LAQUER; COLIN B. HEIDEMAN, Se-
attle, WA.
______________________
Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 2 Filed: 07/28/2022
2 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
Before MOORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit
Judges.
HUGHES, Circuit Judge.
Defendants-Appellants Amazon.com, Inc. and Ama-
zon.com LLC appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Texas’ denial of Amazon’s motion
for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of noninfringe-
ment. Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant Vocalife LLC cross-ap-
peals two of the district court’s summary judgment grants.
Because there is no substantial evidence to support in-
fringement of the “plurality of configurations” limitation,
we reverse the district court’s denial of Amazon’s motion
for judgment as a matter of law, vacate the jury verdict,
and dismiss Vocalife’s cross-appeal as moot.
I
Vocalife owns U.S. Patent No. RE 47,049, which is di-
rected to methods and systems for “enhancing acoustics of
a target sound signal received from a target sound source,
while suppressing ambient noise signals.” ’049 patent,
2:6–8. Claim 1 of the ’049 patent covers one such method
and recites a number of steps, including “providing a mi-
crophone array system comprising an array of sound sen-
sors positioned in a linear, circular, or other configuration”
and “determining a delay . . . wherein said determination
of said delay enables beamforming for said array of sound
sensors in a plurality of configurations.” 1 Id., 21:27–22:3
(claim 1). We refer to the latter step as the “plurality of con-
figurations” limitation.
1 “Beamforming” refers to a signal processing tech-
nique by which the disclosed microphone array can focus
on a sound signal coming from a particular direction in-
stead of sound signals from other directions. See ’049 pa-
tent, 5:65–6:2, 6:17–23.
Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 3 Filed: 07/28/2022
VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 3
Vocalife filed a patent infringement suit against Ama-
zon, accusing certain Amazon Echo products of infringing
the ’049 patent. At the summary judgment stage, the dis-
trict court granted summary judgment that, among other
things, absolute intervening rights under
35 U.S.C. § 252
apply to certain Echo products and Vocalife was not enti-
tled to damages for pre-suit induced infringement. The
case proceeded to trial. Amazon moved for judgment as a
matter of law (JMOL) of noninfringement after the close of
evidence. The district court denied JMOL of no induced in-
fringement but granted JMOL of no direct or contributory
infringement by Amazon and no infringement under the
doctrine of equivalents. Thus, the only infringement issue
for the jury to decide was whether Amazon induced users
of the Echo to literally infringe the patent. After the six-day
trial concluded, the jury returned a verdict finding that
Amazon did. Amazon renewed its motion for JMOL of no
induced infringement, which the district court again de-
nied.
Both parties appeal. Amazon appeals the denial of its
JMOL motion. Vocalife cross-appeals the two summary
judgment grants. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C.
§ 1295(a)(1).
II
We review JMOL denials under the law of the regional
circuit, here the Fifth Circuit, which reviews such denials
de novo. Raytheon Co. v. Indigo Sys. Corp.,
895 F.3d 1333,
1338 (Fed. Cir. 2018). JMOL “is appropriate only where
‘the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelm-
ingly in favor of one party that the court concludes that
reasonable jurors could not arrive at a contrary verdict.’”
Id. (quoting Orion IP, LLC v. Hyundai Motor Am.,
605 F.3d
967, 973 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit law)).
Thus, “[w]e affirm a district court’s denial of [JMOL] when
there was substantial evidence to support the jury’s ver-
dict.”
Id. (citing Power-One, Inc. v. Artesyn Techs., Inc.,
Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 4 Filed: 07/28/2022
4 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
599 F.3d 1343, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (applying Fifth Circuit
law)).
III
Vocalife contends it provided substantial evidence that
the Echo infringes the “plurality of configurations” limita-
tion. At trial, Vocalife’s expert, Joseph McAlexander, testi-
fied that the Echo determines a delay as part of its
beamforming process using inputs from the incoming tar-
get sound signal in conjunction with certain infor-
mation—beam coefficients—stored on the device. See, e.g.,
Appx6326–27 at 617:19–618:3; Appx6340–42 at
631:2–633:19; Appx6427–28 at 718:10–719:22; Appx6429
at 720:10–17. As Mr. McAlexander testified, Amazon cal-
culated the pre-loaded beam coefficients via computer sim-
ulation during development of the Echo and pre-loaded
those coefficients onto the Echo devices during manufac-
turing. See, e.g., Appx6326–27 at 617:3–618:3;
Appx6390–91 at 681:24–682:7. Mr. McAlexander further
testified that the Echo’s delay determination enables
beamforming for a plurality of configurations because the
software code running on the Echo can be utilized across
different Echo products with different microphone array
configurations. See, e.g., Appx6297–98 at 588:21–589:14;
Appx6339–40 at 630:20–631:1.
None of this testimony, however, supports the conclu-
sion that the Echo products infringe the ’049 patent. The
testimony does not show that the delay determination oc-
curring on a given Echo device enables beamforming for a
plurality of configurations, as claim 1 requires. If anything,
Mr. McAlexander’s testimony suggests that this determi-
nation enables beamforming for only the specific micro-
phone array configuration on that specific device. 2
2 At oral argument, Vocalife hypothesized that
“there could be” multiple configurations on a given Echo
Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 5 Filed: 07/28/2022
VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 5
Mr. McAlexander repeatedly described the pre-loaded
beam coefficients as being specific to a “particular” micro-
phone array. See, e.g., Appx6325–26 at 616:14–617:2 (Am-
azon’s computer simulation is “a construct by which they
take the instantiation of a particular microphone array or-
ganized in a certain fashion, arranged in a certain archi-
tecture” to create beam coefficients “that are associated
with [ ] that particular kind of a structure.”); Appx6326 at
617:7–18 (Amazon “take[s] a specific designed architecture
with a physical arrangement of the microphones” to pro-
vide the beam coefficients, which “go[] into the [ ] initial
construct of how the beams will be formed once they are
instantiated in the accused device.”); Appx6327 at
618:6–11 (The beam coefficients “include the understand-
ing of how that arrangement of the architecture is,” as “you
have to define the microphone array first.”); Appx6437 at
728:8–14 (Amazon determines the beam coefficients “based
on an architectural arrangement or a layout of the sound
sensors” and “that calculation is already built into the co-
efficients that are then programmed into this device.”).
While it is undisputed that Amazon pre-loads certain beam
coefficients onto each Echo device, Vocalife provides no ev-
idence showing that the coefficients loaded onto a given
Echo device enable beamforming for a variety of micro-
phone configurations, as opposed to only the configuration
device “in the situations where not all of the microphones
are operating or certain microphones aren’t receiving the
sound or performing as designed.” Oral Argument at
20:00–20:09, https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/de-
fault.aspx?fl=21-1937_07072022.mp3. This contention,
which appears nowhere in Vocalife’s briefing, comes too
late. See Henry v. Dep’t of Justice,
157 F.3d 863, 865 (Fed.
Cir. 1998) (declining to consider argument raised for the
first time at oral argument). In any event, Vocalife cites no
evidence—nor have we found any—showing that these hy-
pothetical configurations exist.
Case: 21-1937 Document: 73 Page: 6 Filed: 07/28/2022
6 VOCALIFE LLC v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
of that particular device. Mr. McAlexander’s conclusory,
unsupported testimony that the Echo meets the “plurality
of configurations” limitation, see Appx6338 at 629:2–14, is
otherwise insufficient to support the jury’s infringement
verdict, see, e.g., Yoon Ja Kim v. ConAgra Foods, Inc.,
465 F.3d 1312, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (affirming JMOL of
noninfringement where patentee’s expert offered only con-
clusory, unsupported testimony).
Because there is no substantial evidence showing that
any delay determination occurring on a given Echo device
enables beamforming for a microphone array “in a plurality
of configurations,” we conclude that Vocalife failed as a
matter of law to prove that the Echo infringes claim 1 of
the ’049 patent. We reverse the district court’s denial of
JMOL of no induced infringement and vacate the jury ver-
dict. This moots Vocalife’s cross-appeal, and we accordingly
dismiss as moot Appeal No. 2021-1984.
REVERSED IN PART, DISMISSED IN PART
Costs to Defendants-Appellants.
