Patent and Trademark: Court resolves claim construction disputes in video streaming patent suit

Where parties disputed multiple claims in a suit over video streaming patents, they were construed by the court.

Background

DivX Inc. has sued Amazon.com Inc. and Amazon Web Services Inc., alleging infringement of seven patents pertaining to video streaming. This matter comes before the court for claim construction.

Maximum bitrate(s)

DivX contends that no construction is necessary or, alternatively, that it should be construed according to its plain and ordinary meaning. Amazon urges “the highest bitrate used to encode the video content.” The court construes “maximum bitrate(s)” as “the highest bitrate used to encode a particular stream of video content.”

Quality

The parties next dispute the construction of terms with steps related to “quality” in the ‘195 and ‘785 patents. The intrinsic and extrinsic evidence indicate that the claim terms pertaining to “quality” are indefinite. The scope of the claims undoubtedly depends on the definition of what is a measure for quality and a degree of quality. The specifications provide no guidance on what quality is or how to measure it.

Decoder application

The parties dispute the meaning of “decoder application” in the ‘303 patent. No construction of “decoder application” is necessary. Nothing in the intrinsic record compels the conclusion that the decoder application is limited to “software” to the exclusion of firmware or an operating system, as Amazon proposes.

Notably, as identified by DivX, the specification shows that the decoder application may be held in non-volatile memory, and DivX’s extrinsic evidence establishes that one type of non-volatile memory is flash memory, something that no one has suggested is read-only as to render it unsuitable for the claim context, which renders the decoder application “firmware” or an “embedded application” or “combination hardware/software” or “hard software.”

Ordering

The parties next dispute about ordering of steps in the ‘141 patent. DivX contends that no construction is needed regarding order of steps, while Amazon argues the recited steps must occur in the same order as recited in the claim. The court finds that ordering of certain of steps 20.b through 20.h of Claim 20 is necessary, but not to the full extent suggested by Amazon.

To the extent that Amazon suggests that all steps in 20.b through 20.h be strictly ordered in excess of the above, and it is not clear that Amazon is requesting so, nothing in the intrinsic or extrinsic record supports such construction. Because the claim language is clear, it is not necessary for the court to examine the specification, as DivX suggests. Nevertheless, DivX’s suggestion that the specification belies ordering in various ways does not hold water.

Seek construction

“Seek instruction” will be construed as an “instruction to commence playback from a new location.” As DivX recounted at oral argument, the parties’ construction dispute arises not from whether “seek instruction” per se excludes trick play and limited to skipping between scenes; rather, DivX denies that a “seek instruction” itself specifies a playback location. The court does not agree with DivX’s position.

Cipher

The parties next dispute the construction of “cipher.” Contrary to DivX’s argument that a key is merely not required for ciphering, the intrinsic record compels the conclusion that Amazon’s construction must be adopted. “Cipher” will be constructed as “a procedure to scramble or unscramble secure data [the cryptographic material] without using a key.”

Means plus

The court finds that “a computer system configured as a media metadata generation device” is subject to Section 112(f) and has the function of “generating media metadata related to the source video file prior to decoding, doing a transcoding of, at least a portion of the source video file, where the metadata comprises scene complexity information” with structure media metadata source 106 in 806 Patent Fig. I and related disclosures regarding algorithms for generating media metadata.

Final construction

Finally the court finds that “video decoder process” and “DRM process” are not subject to Section 112(f) and that no construction is necessary.

DivX Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc., Case No. 1:24-cv-2061, Oct. 22, 2025. EDVA at Alexandria (Nachmanoff). VLW 025-3-444. 31 pp.