BillSure LLC v. Amdocs Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: BillSure LLC (NM)
  • Defendant: Amdocs, Inc. (DE)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 2:25-cv-00031, E.D. Tex., 01/15/2025
• Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper because Defendant maintains an established place of business in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s unspecified products and services for network resource accounting infringe a patent related to verifying network usage records to prevent billing fraud.
• Technical Context: The technology addresses the problem of fraudulent billing in multi-party network environments, such as public Wi-Fi hotspots, where the network operator and the ultimate billing provider are separate entities.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not mention any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit. The willfulness claim is based on post-filing knowledge.

Case Timeline

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

U.S. Patent No. 8,005,457 - “Method and system for verifying network resource usage records,” issued Aug. 23, 2011

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: In network environments where a user's billing provider is different from the local network access provider (e.g., a Wi-Fi hotspot), the local provider can fraudulently inflate usage data to overcharge the user via their billing provider. The patent notes it is "almost impossible for the Billing Service Provider to detect fraud of this type using present standards and technologies" (’457 Patent, col. 2:18-21).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a system where both the network user's device and the access gateway independently track network usage. Periodically during a session, the user's device sends its own billing data to the access gateway. The gateway compares this received data with its own records; if they "correlate," the gateway stores the verified data received from the user device. This creates a mutually-agreed-upon record that cannot be unilaterally altered by the gateway operator before being sent to the ultimate billing provider (’457 Patent, Abstract; col. 6:1-19).
• Technical Importance: This approach seeks to decentralize trust in billing systems, creating an auditable, real-time verification mechanism at the point of service delivery rather than relying on post-hoc audits by a central provider (’457 Patent, col. 4:14-25).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of one or more unspecified claims, referring to them as the "Exemplary '457 Patent Claims" (Compl. ¶11). The patent’s independent claims are 1 (system), 6 (method), 11 (method), and 16 (system).
• Independent Claim 1 (System) requires:
  • An access gateway device for coupling to a network user device and a billing service provider's system.
  • The network user device generating billing data based on its actual network resource usage (e.g., connection time, data volume).
  • The access gateway device being configured to compare received billing data from the user device with corresponding billing data it generated itself during network usage.
  • If the received billing data "correlates" to the gateway's data, the access gateway device stores predetermined portions of the received billing data.
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert dependent claims, but refers generally to "one or more claims" (Compl. ¶11).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The complaint does not specifically name any accused products or services. It refers generally to "Defendant products identified in the charts incorporated into this Count below (among the 'Exemplary Defendant Products')" (Compl. ¶11). These charts are referenced as Exhibit 2 but were not provided with the complaint document.

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint does not provide sufficient detail for analysis of the accused instrumentality's specific functionality or market context. It alleges that the "Exemplary Defendant Products practice the technology claimed by the '457 Patent" (Compl. ¶16).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint alleges that Defendant's products infringe the ’457 Patent but incorporates the substance of its infringement theory by reference to claim charts in "Exhibit 2," which is not attached to the filed complaint (Compl. ¶¶16-17). The complaint asserts that these charts compare the "Exemplary '457 Patent Claims to the Exemplary Defendant Products" and that the products "satisfy all elements of the Exemplary '457 Patent Claims" (Compl. ¶16). As the charts are not available, a detailed element-by-element analysis is not possible based on the provided documents. No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Technical Questions: A central question will be whether the accused products perform the specific comparison recited in the claims. The court will need to determine what evidence exists that the accused systems (1) receive billing data generated by an end-user device, (2) compare that data to their own independently-generated billing data, and (3) store the end-user's data only if the two sets of data correlate.
  • Scope Questions: The case may turn on whether the functionality of Amdocs's products, which typically operate at the carrier or service-provider level, falls within the scope of an "access gateway device" as described in the patent, which is depicted as a local device like a "wireless hotspot" (’457 Patent, col. 1:61-64).

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

• The Term: "correlates" (from Claim 1)
• Context and Importance: This term is the functional heart of the invention. The infringement analysis will depend on how closely the billing data from the user device and the gateway must match to be considered "correlated." Practitioners may focus on this term because it is not explicitly defined and could be interpreted narrowly (e.g., requiring a precise numerical match) or broadly (e.g., allowing for a match within a certain tolerance or range).
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification suggests some flexibility, stating the gateway may "take into account the latency involved in generating and transmitting the billing data" and determine if a parameter is "within the specific range of values that would be expected" (’457 Patent, col. 6:18-23). This may support a construction that does not require an exact match.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent also provides a specific example where "the expected range of values would only be a single value" (e.g., a session time counter rounded to the nearest 10 seconds), suggesting that for some parameters, correlation implies an exact match after accounting for known, discrete variables (’457 Patent, col. 6:26-30).

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: Plaintiff alleges induced infringement, stating that Defendant distributes "product literature and website materials inducing end users and others to use its products in the customary and intended manner that infringes the '457 Patent" (Compl. ¶14). The complaint references Exhibit 2 for further details (Compl. ¶14).
• Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges that Defendant has actual knowledge of infringement based on the service of the complaint itself (Compl. ¶13). It alleges that despite this knowledge, Defendant "continues to make, use, test, sell, offer for sale, market, and/or import" infringing products, supporting a claim for post-filing willful infringement (Compl. ¶14).

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

1. Evidentiary Sufficiency: A primary threshold issue arises from the complaint's lack of specificity. A key question will be whether the complaint, which incorporates its core factual allegations by reference to an unattached exhibit, provides plausible factual support for its claims under modern pleading standards, or if Defendant will be able to challenge the sufficiency of the infringement allegations.
2. Technical Mechanism: The central technical question will be one of operational correspondence: do the accused Amdocs systems actually perform the claimed two-sided verification process? The case will likely depend on evidence demonstrating that the accused systems receive billing data from an end-user device and perform a "correlation" against their own data as a condition for storing a verified billing record, as opposed to using a different, one-sided method for usage accounting.
3. Definitional Scope: A critical legal question will be the construction of the term "access gateway device." The case may turn on whether this term, which the patent specification associates with local network infrastructure like Wi-Fi hotspots, can be construed to read on the large-scale billing and operational support systems that constitute Amdocs's core business.