Vehicle Navigation Patent Miss Its Mark

Posted on | March 30, 2008 | No Comments

08-1259 Vehicle IP v. General Motors
WD/WI 07-CV-345

IP management companies have not fared well in Chief Judge Barbara Crabb’s courtroom lately.  Similar to her recent decision in Netcraft, Chief Judge Crabb  granted summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Gem’s On Star and Horizon’s VIZ Navigator products. The dispute centered on Patent No. 6,535,743 and whether the accused products downloaded direction segments "comprising a command and a notification region defined by a plurality of notification coordinates."  The Court construed this to mean a navigation system using two or more coordinates in proximity to, but not including, the actual upcoming maneuver point (e.g., left turn at Albuquerque).  Chief Judge Crabb concluded that Gem’s On Star or VIZ Navigation cannot infringe this claim literally as neither system navigates using a plurality of coordinates in proximity to the maneuver point–indeed, they rely on the coordinates of the actual maneuver point.  The Court also rejected Vehicle IP’s doctrine of equivalents arguments as the navigation calculations in the accused devices (performed in the mobile units) are not done in the same "way" claimed in the ‘743 patent (performed at the server or service center).  Chief Judge Crabb concluded her opinion with a quick–and much appreciated–summary of the "murky issue" of a district court’s jurisdiction over declaratory judgment claims after a noninfringement finding, choosing to exercise her discretion to dismiss defendants’ counterclaims without prejudice.

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