Lab Technology LLC v. Verizon Communications Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Lab Technology LLC (New Mexico)
  • Defendant: Verizon Communications Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 2:24-cv-00323, E.D. Tex., 05/03/2024
• Venue Allegations: Venue is asserted based on the defendant having an established place of business within the Eastern District of Texas and allegedly committing acts of patent infringement in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s telecommunications products and services infringe three patents related to obtaining emergency caller locations, recording and analyzing voice message usage, and automatically refreshing a telephone's display based on user context.
• Technical Context: The patents-in-suit address challenges and opportunities in modern telecommunications, including providing accurate location for mobile/VoIP emergency calls, enabling corporate oversight of voicemail systems, and improving user interface efficiency on multi-function devices.
• Key Procedural History: The front pages of the patents-in-suit indicate they are subject to terminal disclaimers. This may introduce potential defenses related to obviousness-type double patenting based on the patents to which they are terminally disclaimed. The complaint does not mention any other prior litigation, licensing, or administrative proceedings.

Case Timeline

Date	Event
2005-07-14	U.S. Patent No. 8,503,973 Priority Date
2005-10-13	U.S. Patent No. 8,515,032 Priority Date
2006-06-22	U.S. Patent No. 9,219,982 Priority Date
2013-08-06	U.S. Patent No. 8,503,973 Issue Date
2013-08-20	U.S. Patent No. 8,515,032 Issue Date
2015-12-22	U.S. Patent No. 9,219,982 Issue Date
2024-05-03	Complaint Filing Date

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 8,503,973 - “Method and system for obtaining emergency caller location”

Issued August 6, 2013

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes the problem that arises with mobile and Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone services, where a user's physical location is no longer fixed to a specific telephone line. This creates a "fairly complex problem" for emergency services like 911, which traditionally rely on a static, registered address, potentially leading to emergency responders being dispatched to the wrong location (e.g., a user's home when they are traveling with their VoIP phone) (’973 Patent, col. 2:23-56).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a method where a mobile device actively manages its location information. The device obtains its "current wireless base station identity," compares it to a previously "stored wireless base station identity," and if they do not match (indicating the device has moved), the device obtains a new "subscriber location" corresponding to its new position and sends this updated location to the phone system. This ensures the phone system has more current location data for routing emergency calls ('973 Patent, Abstract; col. 4:41-59).
• Technical Importance: This technology aims to close a critical public safety gap created by the shift from traditional landlines to mobile and nomadic VoIP communications, where automatically and accurately identifying a caller's location is essential for emergency response.

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of "one or more claims" (Compl. ¶13). Independent claim 1 is representative and requires:
  • obtaining by the mobile phone a current wireless base station identity for a current wireless base station to which the mobile phone is coupled
  • obtaining by the mobile phone a stored wireless base station identity
  • determining by the mobile phone that the current wireless base station identity does not match the stored wireless base station identity
  • obtaining by the mobile phone a subscriber location corresponding to the current base wireless station identity
  • sending the subscriber location by the mobile phone to the phone system
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert dependent claims.

U.S. Patent No. 8,515,032 - “System to record and analyze voice message usage information”

Issued August 20, 2013

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent identifies a lack of "tractable information" in conventional corporate voicemail systems. This makes it difficult for companies to enforce usage policies, distinguish between business and personal use, or investigate potential leaks of proprietary information, particularly after messages have been deleted (’032 Patent, col. 1:36-51).
• The Patented Solution: The invention describes a system that creates a comprehensive "Voice Message Record" for both sent and received voice messages. As shown in Figure 2, this record includes the voice message itself, sender and recipient identities, and a series of timestamped "Voice Message Action Records" (e.g., "sent," "received," "listened"). By storing these detailed records in a datastore, the system enables an analyzer to generate reports on voicemail usage, providing auditable trails of communication ('032 Patent, Abstract; col. 2:30-40).
• Technical Importance: This system provides a mechanism for corporate governance and data retention for voice communications, analogous to what had become common for email and other electronic data.

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of "one or more claims" (Compl. ¶22). Independent claim 1 is representative and requires:
  • receiving by a voice message system a voice message from a voice message sender
  • creating a first voice message record for the message and storing it, where the record includes the message, a sender identity, a record of a "send action," and a sending time
  • creating a second voice message record for the message and storing it, where the record includes the message, the sender identity, a recipient identity, a record of a "receive action," and a current time
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert dependent claims.

U.S. Patent No. 9,219,982 - “Apparatus and method for automatically refreshing a display of a telephone”

Issued December 22, 2015

Technology Synopsis

The patent addresses the inefficiency of navigating complex menus on a telephone. It proposes a solution where the phone automatically refreshes its display to show a set of "commonly used communication services" that are relevant to the user's current "function," which is defined by conditions such as time or location (’982 Patent, Abstract; col. 2:4-8). A "function selector" on the phone can obtain the user's location from a server and select an appropriate function and corresponding services from a datastore to display ('982 Patent, col. 2:57-65).

Asserted Claims

The complaint asserts infringement of "one or more claims" (Compl. ¶31). Independent claims 1 and 13 are representative.

Accused Features

The complaint alleges infringement by "Exemplary Defendant Products" but does not identify these products or their specific features in the complaint body, instead incorporating them by reference from an external exhibit (Compl. ¶31, ¶36).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The complaint does not identify any specific accused products, methods, or services in its main body. It refers to "the Defendant products identified in the charts incorporated into this Count" (Compl. ¶13, ¶22, ¶31). These charts are allegedly contained in Exhibits 4, 5, and 6, which were not filed with the complaint.

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint does not provide sufficient detail for analysis of the accused instrumentality's functionality or market context. No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint incorporates claim charts by reference to external Exhibits 4 and 5 that were not provided. As such, a detailed claim chart summary cannot be constructed from the available documents. The narrative allegations are generic, stating that the "Exemplary Defendant Products practice the technology claimed" and "satisfy all elements" of the asserted claims (Compl. ¶18, ¶27).

’973 Patent Infringement Allegations

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Scope Questions: Claim 1 requires the "mobile phone" itself to perform the determination that it has moved and to initiate the location update. A central question may be whether the accused systems perform these steps on the user device as claimed, or whether location tracking and updating functions are primarily managed by the network infrastructure. The distinction between device-side and network-side execution could be critical.
  • Technical Questions: What evidence demonstrates that an accused device obtains and compares a "current wireless base station identity" with a "stored wireless base station identity" to trigger a location update? The infringement analysis will depend on whether Verizon's E911 location services for mobile or VoIP devices operate according to this specific claimed mechanism, as opposed to other location-determination technologies like GPS or network-based triangulation that may not rely on comparing base station IDs in this manner.

’032 Patent Infringement Allegations

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Scope Questions: Claim 1 requires the creation of two distinct records for a single message transaction: a "first voice message record" for the send action and a "second voice message record" for the receive action. A point of contention may be whether the accused voicemail system creates two separate and complete records as claimed, or if it uses a single data entry that is merely updated with different status flags (e.g., "sent," "delivered," "read").
  • Technical Questions: A key evidentiary question will be whether the accused system's log files constitute a "voice message record" that includes "the voice message" itself, as recited in the claim ('032 Patent, col. 9:22-23). The analysis will need to determine if the actual audio data is stored within the log entry or if the entry merely contains a pointer to an audio file stored elsewhere, which may raise questions about whether the claim limitation is met.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

For the ’973 Patent

• The Term: "subscriber location" (Claim 1)
• Context and Importance: This term defines the core data that is obtained and sent by the mobile phone. The construction of this term will determine what type of information (e.g., a civic address, GPS coordinates, a cell sector identifier) satisfies the claim limitations and is therefore central to the infringement analysis.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification discloses that the location can be "geophysical location coordinates" ('973 Patent, col. 4:36-37), which could support an interpretation that includes raw GPS or other coordinate-based data.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification also describes the location in terms of a physical address, such as "a street address, a building number, a cubicle number" ('973 Patent, col. 4:35-36). A party could argue the term should be limited to a civic address of the type found in a traditional E911 ALI database, consistent with the patent's stated goal of solving the E911 problem.

For the ’032 Patent

• The Term: "voice message record" (Claim 1)
• Context and Importance: The invention is premised on the creation and storage of these specific records. Whether the data logs generated by the accused system meet the structural and content requirements of a "voice message record" will likely be a dispositive issue for infringement.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: A party might argue the term should be construed broadly to cover any data structure that logically associates the required elements (the message, identities, and action logs), even if they are not stored in a single, contiguous data file.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The description and Figure 2 suggest a discrete data object that comprises the voice message, sender/recipient identities, and a plurality of action records ('032 Patent, Fig. 2; col. 2:30-40). A party could argue that a system that logs these pieces of information in separate database tables or log files does not create a singular "voice message record" as claimed.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges that the defendant induces infringement by distributing "product literature and website materials" that instruct end users on how to use the accused products in an infringing manner (Compl. ¶16, ¶25, ¶34).
• Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges knowledge of infringement "at least since being served by this Complaint" (Compl. ¶17, ¶26, ¶35). These allegations appear to support a claim for post-suit willful infringement only, as no facts supporting pre-suit knowledge are alleged.

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

• Evidentiary Proof: A primary issue will be factual and evidentiary: can the plaintiff demonstrate that the defendant's complex, large-scale telecommunications systems actually operate in the specific manner recited by the claims? Given the complaint's lack of technical detail on the accused products, discovery will be essential to determine if there is a technical match between the accused systems and the patent claims.
• Locus of Operation: For the '973 patent, a key question will be one of claim scope and technical operation: does the accused mobile device itself perform the claimed steps of detecting a change in base station identity and initiating a location update, as the claim language suggests? Or are these functions primarily performed by the network, which could create a mismatch with the claim limitations.
• Data Structure Equivalence: For the '032 patent, the dispute may center on claim construction and functional equivalence: do the data logs in the accused voicemail system constitute a "voice message record" as specifically defined in the patent? The case could turn on whether the system's method of storing message data, user identities, and action logs is structurally equivalent to the integrated record-keeping system claimed.