E Beacon LLC v. Avaya Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: e-Beacon LLC (Delaware)
  • Defendant: Avaya Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 3:25-cv-00524, N.D. Tex., 03/01/2025
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper in the Northern District of Texas because Defendant Avaya Inc. maintains an established place of business in Irving, Texas, and has allegedly committed acts of patent infringement within the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s products and services for Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony infringe a patent related to determining and transmitting a user's physical location during an emergency call.
• Technical Context: The technology addresses the public safety challenge of providing reliable E911 services for VoIP users, whose devices are often mobile and not associated with a fixed physical address.
• Key Procedural History: The patent-in-suit is identified as a continuation-in-part of a prior patent application, which may be relevant for determining the effective filing date of certain claims. The complaint does not mention any other prior litigation, licensing history, or administrative proceedings involving the patent.

Case Timeline

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

U.S. Patent No. 8,515,386 - "Emergency services for voice over IP telephony (E-VOIP)"

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent's background section identifies a key deficiency in early VoIP systems: unlike traditional landline telephones, a VoIP phone is not tied to a single, verifiable physical address. This creates a significant risk that if a user places an emergency call while traveling, emergency responders could be dispatched to the user's registered home address instead of their actual current location ('386 Patent, col. 1:24-44).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a system that actively determines a VoIP device's current physical location using modern positioning technologies. The system is designed to use a "plurality" of location detection methods, such as GPS and various cellular network-based techniques (e.g., CDMA, GSM), to find the device ('386 Patent, col. 7:51-65; Fig. 4). When an emergency call is placed, the system automatically transmits these determined coordinates to the emergency call center (PSAP), allowing for accurate dispatch regardless of where the user is located ('386 Patent, Abstract).
• Technical Importance: This technology was aimed at closing a critical public safety gap by making E911 services for nomadic VoIP devices functionally equivalent to the reliable, location-aware services available for traditional telephones ('386 Patent, col. 1:11-23).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint alleges infringement of "one or more claims" but does not specify them in the main body, instead referencing an external exhibit not provided with the complaint (Compl. ¶10). Independent claim 1 is representative of the core inventive method.
• Independent Claim 1 recites a method with the following essential elements:
  • making a plurality of attempts to determine the physical location of the VoIP phone, each using a separate location detection technology ("LDT")
  • if an attempt is successful, storing the physical location
  • placing a call to the emergency services call center
  • automatically transmitting the physical location of the VoIP phone to the emergency services call center
• The complaint's reference to "exemplary claims" suggests it reserves the right to assert other independent or dependent claims (Compl. ¶10).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The complaint does not name any specific accused products, methods, or services from Defendant Avaya Inc. It refers generally to "Exemplary Defendant Products" that are purportedly identified in an "Exhibit 2" attached to the complaint (Compl. ¶10, ¶15). This exhibit was not provided for analysis.

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint alleges that the accused products "practice the technology claimed by the '386 Patent" (Compl. ¶15). However, it provides no specific technical details regarding how the accused products operate, their features, or their functions. The complaint also makes no specific allegations regarding the commercial importance or market position of the unnamed accused products.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint alleges that infringement is detailed in claim charts provided as Exhibit 2, which was not available for this analysis (Compl. ¶16). The complaint's narrative asserts that these charts compare the "Exemplary '386 Patent Claims" to the "Exemplary Defendant Products" and demonstrate that the products satisfy all elements of the asserted claims (Compl. ¶15). Without the specific product details or the claim charts, a direct analysis of the infringement allegations is not possible.

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

Based on the language of claim 1 and the general nature of the dispute, several points of contention may arise.

• Technical Question: A foundational question will be whether the accused Avaya systems, in fact, make a "plurality of attempts" to find a device's location using "separate location detection technology" as required by the claim. The case may focus on what evidence demonstrates that Avaya's products use distinct technologies (e.g., both GPS-based and cellular-based location methods) rather than a single technology that may use multiple data sources (e.g., triangulation from multiple cell towers).
• Scope Questions: The dispute may turn on the definition of "automatically transmitting." The parties may contest whether the accused system transmits location data without any user or system-level intervention after the call is initiated, or if any intermediate steps or prompts fall outside the scope of "automatically."

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The Term: "separate location detection technology ('LDT')"

• Context and Importance: This term is central to the asserted independent claim and defines the core technical requirement of the invention. The outcome of the infringement analysis may depend heavily on whether the accused system's location-finding methods are deemed "separate."
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification provides a long, non-exhaustive list of potential LDTs, including "geolocation, location based service (LBS), GSM localization, triangulation," "GPS, CDMA and GSM," and "A-GPS...Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and other such technologies" ('386 Patent, col. 7:56-65). A plaintiff may argue this broad disclosure supports a construction where any two technologically distinct methods qualify as "separate."
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: A defendant may point to the patent’s repeated structural distinction between different classes of technology, such as satellite-based (GPS) and network-based (cellular), to argue that "separate" requires a fundamental difference in the underlying physical mechanism. The flowchart in Figure 4, which depicts parallel but distinct processing paths for "LDT - GPS," "LDT - CDMA," and "LDT - GSM," could be used to argue that the patentee envisioned substantially different, non-overlapping technologies ('386 Patent, Fig. 4).

The Term: "automatically transmitting"

• Context and Importance: This term is critical for defining the required level of system autonomy. Whether the accused product's data transmission process meets this standard will be a key infringement question.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent states that a key advantage of the invention is that "the entire operation can be completed, and the caller's street address communicated, without the caller having to actually speak with the 911 operator" ('386 Patent, col. 4:8-12). This language suggests the patentee intended "automatically" to mean a process that proceeds without requiring human interaction once initiated.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The detailed call flow in Figure 6A shows that the "Send Location Information" step (16) occurs only after the system confirms that a call is "Connected" (step 15) ('386 Patent, Fig. 6A). A defendant could argue that if the transmission is contingent upon the successful completion of a prior, separate step, it is not truly "automatic" in the sense of being an unconditional, immediate consequence of dialing.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges induced infringement, stating that Avaya distributes "product literature and website materials inducing end users and others to use its products in the customary and intended manner that infringes the '386 Patent" (Compl. ¶13-14).
• Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges that Avaya has had "Actual Knowledge of Infringement" since the service of the complaint and has "continued to make, use, test, sell, offer for sale, market, and/or import" infringing products (Compl. ¶12-13). These allegations provide a basis for a claim of post-filing willful infringement.

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

• A central issue will be one of evidentiary proof: As the complaint does not identify any specific Avaya products or their operational characteristics, the case will depend on what evidence plaintiff can obtain in discovery to show that Avaya's systems actually perform the multi-step method of the asserted claims, particularly the use of multiple, separate location technologies.
• The dispute is also likely to involve a core question of definitional scope: How will the court construe the term "separate location detection technology"? The case may turn on whether this requires fundamentally different underlying physics (e.g., satellite vs. cellular) or if distinct software algorithms using the same set of network signals can be considered "separate," a distinction that will be critical for the infringement analysis.