ALTERWAN, INC. v. AMAZON.COM, INC.

ALTERWAN, INC. v. AMAZON.COM, INC. [OPINION] The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's claim constructions, holding that "cooperating service provider" means a service provider that agrees to provide non-blocking bandwidth and that "non-blocking bandwidth" means bandwidth always available and sufficient while the network can transmit data. Because those constructions supported the stipulated noninfringement judgment, the court did not reach the damages-expert exclusion. The decision underscores that prosecution history and a specification’s repeated focus on the asserted inventive feature can narrow a later-added claim term even where the exact term does not appear in the specification. Affirmed the stipulated judgment of noninfringement. The asserted claims recited "cooperating service provider," a term added during prosecution and not used in the specification. The majority relied on the intrinsic record, including prosecution statements distinguishing prior art and the specification’s emphasis on special providers supplying non-blocking bandwidth, to reject AlterWAN’s broader plain-meaning construction. On remand, the district court revised "non-blocking bandwidth" to avoid requiring performance when transmission is impossible; the Federal Circuit found no clear error in the subsidiary fact findings supporting that construction. The affirmed constructions led to a stipulated noninfringement judgment, so the panel did not address AlterWAN’s challenge to exclusion of its damages expert. Judge Subramanian dissented, arguing that the majority improperly imported "non-blocking bandwidth" into "cooperating service provider" and gave insufficient weight to the claim language. claim construction infringement damages remand non-precedential claim construction infringement damages remand non-precedential claim construction infringement non-precedential damages