PAVO SOLUTIONS LLC v. KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY COMPANY, INC.

Kingston appeals the District Court’s judgment that Kingston willfully infringed certain claims of Pavo’s U.S. Patent No. 6,926,544 relating to a flash memory apparatus having a single body type rotary cover, and awarding over $7.5MM in compensatory damages, enhanced by 50 percent.  On appeal, Kingston’s argues that the district court should not have judicially corrected certain claim language. However, after finding that “pivoting the case with respect to the flash memory main body” contains an obvious minor clerical error, that the correction is not subject to reasonable debate, and that the prosecution history does not suggest a different interpretation, the CAFC agrees with the district court’s construction that “pivoting the case with respect to the flash memory main body” means “pivoting the cover with respect to the flash memory main body.” Kingston also argues that it could not have formed the requisite intent to support a willfulness finding because it did not infringe the claims as originally written and because it could not have anticipated that a court would later correct the claims. On this issue, the CAFC holds that reliance on an obvious minor clerical error in the claim language is not a defense to willful infringement. The CAFC also rejects Kingston’s challenges to certain damages testimony and affirms the District Court’s judgment.

View Decision