DatRec LLC v. Capgemini US LLC

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: DatRec, LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: Capgemini US. LLC (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Ramey LLP
• Case Identification: DatRec, LLC v. Capgemini US. LLC, 7:25-cv-00321, W.D. Tex., 07/18/2025
• Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper in the Western District of Texas because Defendant maintains a "regular and established place of business" in Austin, Texas, and has committed alleged acts of infringement within the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s Bookplan product, a system for secure communication, infringes a patent related to methods for verifying user identity and defining communication levels over a public network.
• Technical Context: The technology relates to establishing trust in online communications by creating a database of verified user data, where the reliability of an individual's identity is determined by corroborating data entered by different, related individuals.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint discloses that Plaintiff and its predecessors have entered into settlement licenses with other entities for its patents. Plaintiff, a non-practicing entity, argues these prior licenses do not trigger marking requirements under 35 U.S.C. § 287 because they were method claims and the licensees did not produce a patented article.

Case Timeline

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

U.S. Patent No. 8,381,309 - "Methods and Systems for Secure Communication Over a Public Network"

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 8,381,309, "Methods and Systems for Secure Communication Over a Public Network," issued February 19, 2013 ('309 Patent).

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent background notes that in modern internet communications, users are often "exposed to non-secure connections and to communications from unreliable or falsely-identified senders" (’309 Patent, col. 1:22-25). This creates a need for a higher level of security and confidence in the identity of communication partners (’309 Patent, col. 1:41-43).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a system where a central database is built from user-submitted data about themselves and their relatives, forming a "relationship web" (’309 Patent, col. 9:11-14; Fig. 2). The system verifies an individual's identity by comparing data submitted by different users; a "level of reliability" is determined based on the "degree of similarity" or correspondence between these different data entries (’309 Patent, col. 4:4-6, col. 19:26-29). Based on this verification, the system defines permitted levels of communication between users, allowing for more secure interactions (’309 Patent, Abstract).
• Technical Importance: The approach aims to improve online trust by moving beyond simple self-declared identities and using a crowd-sourced, cross-verification model to establish a reliability score for a user's identity data (’309 Patent, col. 2:5-16).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of claims 1-17 (’309 Patent, Compl. ¶8). Claim 1 is the sole independent claim.
• Claim 1 Elements:
  • A method for communication between users over a network, comprising:
  • (a) providing a database with verified data relating to an individual's identity, where the database is constructed by:
    • permitting a plurality of related individuals to enter data on the individual, which is an "individual-associated data bits (IDB)" comprising a personal identifier and relationship data indicative of a family tree,
    • generating an "individual-associated data set (IDS)" from the IDB,
    • verifying the IDS by determining a "level of reliability" based on a "degree of similarity" between data on the individual entered by different individuals, and
  • (b) compiling the IDSs to construct the database, and defining one or more levels of permitted communication between individuals in the database and the verified individual based on the verification.
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert other claims, but its assertion of claims 1-17 covers all dependent claims (’309 Patent, Compl. ¶8).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The accused instrumentality is identified as Defendant's "Bookplan product" (Compl. ¶9).

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint alleges that Defendant "maintains, operates, and administers a system and methods for secure communication over a public network" through its Bookplan product (Compl. ¶8). It further alleges that Defendant offers the product with instructions or advertisements that suggest an infringing use, citing a URL related to "powering-improved-performance-in-hospitals" (Compl. ¶11). This suggests the Bookplan product is a communication or data management platform marketed to the healthcare industry.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint references an "exemplary table attached as Exhibit B" to support its infringement allegations, but this exhibit was not filed with the complaint (Compl. ¶9). Therefore, the analysis is based on the narrative allegations.

The complaint alleges that Defendant's Bookplan product is a "system and methods for secure communication over a public network" that infringes one or more claims of the ’309 Patent (Compl. ¶8). The central theory of infringement appears to be that the Bookplan product performs the patented method of verifying user identities and setting communication permissions based on that verification. The complaint does not, however, provide specific factual allegations detailing how the Bookplan product constructs a database, permits related users to enter data, calculates a "level of reliability," or defines communication levels as required by the patent's claims.

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The Term: "level of reliability based on a degree of similarity between data on the individual entered by different individuals"

• Context and Importance: This term is the core of the verification step in claim 1. The outcome of the case may depend on how the court defines the specific process of calculating "reliability" and "similarity." Practitioners may focus on whether the accused system's method for validating or authenticating users meets this specific, multi-part definition.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification suggests this can be a flexible process, mentioning that a "relative reliability R of more than 8 out of 10 is required for a preliminary acceptance" as one example, which could imply other methods are contemplated (’309 Patent, col. 10:55-58).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent provides detailed examples of comparing data "strings" from different users and requiring a high percentage of matches (e.g., "over 95%") to ascribe high reliability, which could be argued to limit the scope to a direct, quantitative comparison of overlapping data fields (’309 Patent, col. 10:65-col. 11:4).

The Term: "individual-associated data bits (IDB) comprising a personal identifier and relationship data indicative of a family tree"

• Context and Importance: This term defines the specific type of input data required to build the patented system. The infringement analysis will require determining if the data collected by the Bookplan system qualifies as an "IDB" with these specific components.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The specification defines "personal identifiers" broadly to include formal identifiers like name and address as well as "education, profession, interests, hobbies, health data," etc. (’309 Patent, col. 5:18-22). This could support a reading that covers a wide variety of user profile data.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent repeatedly emphasizes family relationships, stating the data includes "first degree family members" and that the data sequence is one form of presenting IDB data for forming a "relationship web" (’309 Patent, col. 5:43-46, col. 8:50-54). A defendant may argue this term requires the system to be explicitly designed around collecting and processing genealogical or family-tree-style data, not just general user contacts or colleagues.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges both induced and contributory infringement. For inducement, it claims Defendant actively encourages customers to use Bookplan for secure communication "through its website and product instruction manuals" (Compl. ¶¶10-11). For contributory infringement, it alleges the Bookplan product's "only reasonable use is an infringing use" and that it is not a staple commercial product (Compl. ¶11).
• Willful Infringement: Willfulness is alleged based on knowledge of the ’309 Patent "from at least the filing date of the lawsuit" (Compl. ¶10). The complaint reserves the right to amend if pre-suit knowledge is discovered (Compl. ¶10, fn. 1).

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

• A core issue will be one of evidentiary sufficiency: Can Plaintiff produce evidence showing that the Accused Instrumentality performs the specific method of identity verification claimed in the patent—namely, constructing a database from data entered by multiple related individuals and calculating a "level of reliability" based on the "degree of similarity" between those entries?
• A key question of claim scope will be whether the term "relationship data indicative of a family tree" can be construed to cover professional or organizational relationships managed by a corporate product like Bookplan, or if it is limited to the patent's explicit context of familial and genealogical data.
• A central procedural question will concern damages and marking: Plaintiff's status as a non-practicing entity and its history of prior settlement licenses raise the question of whether its actions were sufficient to comply with the marking statute (35 U.S.C. § 287), which may impact the scope of recoverable pre-suit damages.