Atlas IP, LLC v. St. Jude Med., Inc., No. 15-1190 (Fed. Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseAtlas’s patent describes a protocol for controlling wireless network communications between a hub and remotes. The patent notes the existence of prior-art, but says those systems consumed large amounts of battery power; the remotes had to leave their receivers on at all times. The specification describes means of conserving battery power. Atlas sued, alleging that St. Jude’s medical products for monitoring a patient’s condition infringed claims 11 and 14 of the patent. The district court adopted constructions of the “establishing” and “transmitting” limitations, which are also found in claim 21, the subject of another case, Atlas v. Medtronic. It construed “the hub transmitting information to the remotes to establish the communication cycle and a plurality of predeterminable intervals during each communication cycle,” to mean “the hub transmitting to the remotes information necessary to know in advance the starting time and duration of the communication cycle and of each of two or more predeterminable intervals during each communication cycle.” The court held that its “in advance” requirement meant that information specifying “when the communication cycle starts and its duration . . . must be transmitted in advance of the very communication cycle at issue,” inconsistent with the Medtronic case. The district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement. The Federal Circuit vacated. The district court erred in construing the “transmitting” limitation to require that the starting time and duration of a communication cycle be sent in advance of the communication cycle.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.