Ga. Tech Professor's Transit Patent Asserted Against Lyft Is Indefinite, Tigar Rules
The decision aligns the judge with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and likely spells the end of a retired professor's suit against the ride-hailing company.
October 23, 2019 at 06:52 PM
3 minute read
Photo: Diego Radzinschi/ALM
It's strike two for a former Georgia Tech professor who is suing Lyft Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. for patent infringement.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of Northern District of California ruled last week that all three asserted claims of Stephen Dickerson's 2004 patent on a "communications and computing based urban transit system" are invalid as indefinite. Dickerson assigned U.S. Patent 6,697,703 to his company RideApp Inc., and with backing from Kasowitz Benson Torres, sued Lyft Inc. last year.
Tigar's decision follows similar indefiniteness findings from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board earlier this year, and likely spells the end of RideApp's San Francisco suit. RideApp is still asserting the same patent against Uber in Georgia federal court.
Tigar wrote in his Oct. 16 order that although Dickerson described real-time tracking of users and vehicles using cellular communications and GPS, he didn't sufficiently explain how to do it. RideApp argued that figures and tables in the patent specification make it clear, and that a complex algorithm isn't required.
Tigar disagreed. "In this case, the '730 patent contains no algorithm whatsoever—simple or otherwise—describing how the invention performs the tracking function," he wrote.
The judge said that while he isn't bound by the PTAB decisions, he agreed that the patent also didn't sufficiently explain how to implement "a wireless means of on-demand allocation of a passenger to a specific vehicle." The claim specification includes a module called "Find Best Trip" that states, "Solves the trip assignment task based on available vehicles, their schedules, and their passenger loadings."
"Entirely absent from this description is any procedure for '[s]olv[ing] the trip assignment task,'" Tigar wrote.
"Given the lack of an algorithm for allocation, RideApp 'has in effect claimed everything that [performs the task] under the sun,' and the limitation is 'therefore indefinite,'" Tigar wrote, quoting the Federal Circuit's ePlus v. Lawson decision.
Lyft was represented before Tigar and before the PTAB by Baker Botts.
Partners Jeremy Taylor and associates Keith Jurek and John Gaustad appeared at the Oct. 15 claim construction hearing with Lyft's Sara Giardina. Baker Botts' team also includes partners Jennifer Tempesta, Bryant Boren Jr. and associate Betsy Boggs in district court, and partner Eliot Williams with Taylor and associate Chris Han before the PTAB.
Kasowitz partner Jeffrey Toney, one of the attorneys who appeared for RideApp, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment Wednesday.
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton represents RideApp in the Georgia litigation against Uber. Uber, which is represented by Fish & Richardson, has asked U.S. District Judge Michael Brown of the Northern District of Georgia to dismiss the case on the ground that the patent is drawn to ineligible subject matter.
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