IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Non-infringement judgment partly vacated and remanded in website-building patent lawsuit, (Apr 2, 2025)

By Saurabh Kashyap, B.A., LL.B., LL.M.

Non-infringement ruling for two patents vacated as district court erred in claim construction; affirmed for three related patents as substantial evidence supported the non-infringement finding.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a mixed ruling in a website technology patent dispute between Express Mobile, Inc., a holder of patents directed to web development and display systems, and GoDaddy.com, LLC, a major web services provider. The court reversed the district court's construction of the term "runtime engine" in two patents and vacated the associated summary judgment of non-infringement, remanding for further proceedings. However, it affirmed a jury's verdict of non-infringement concerning three other related patents and upheld the district court's denial of Express Mobile's post-trial motions for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) and for a new trial, finding that Express had failed to preserve its trial objections, and that substantial evidence supported the jury's findings on each disputed claim limitation (Express Mobile, Inc. v. GoDaddy.com, LLC, No. 23-2265 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 2, 2025)).

Background. The plaintiff/appellant, Express Mobile, Inc., a technology company that owns a portfolio of patents for web-based and mobile-friendly application development, filed this lawsuit against the defendant/ appellee GoDaddy.com, LLC in 2019, alleging that GoDaddy's website building tools infringed five of its asserted patents. Two of the patents—U.S. Patent Nos. 6,546,397 and 7,594,168 (the ’397 family)—disclose systems and methods for building websites by presenting customizable settings through a browser and using stored database information to dynamically generate web pages using a runtime file. The three other patents—U.S. Patent Nos. 9,063,755, 9,471,287, and 9,928,044 (the ’755 family)—relate to display and interaction methods for mobile and desktop websites, using symbolic names, device-independent application code, and device-specific players to deliver dynamic content.

The case proceeded through claim construction, dispositive motions, and trial in the District of Delaware. The district court construed the '397 family's "runtime engine" to mean a "file that is executed at runtime that reads information from the database and generates commands to display a web page or website." Based on that construction, the court granted GoDaddy summary judgment of non-infringement, finding that the accused JavaScript files did not read database content and, therefore, could not be infringing. A jury later returned a verdict of non-infringement as to all asserted claims in the '755 family, and the district court denied Express Mobile's post-trial motions. Express appealed both rulings.

Claim construction: “runtime engine.” The Federal Circuit reversed the district court's construction of the claim term "runtime engine," finding it erroneously narrowed the term beyond the language of the claims. Express had argued for a broader construction—one that required the runtime engine to "utilize" information from a database rather than "read" it. The appellate court agreed, holding that nothing in the intrinsic record limited the claim to a runtime engine that must actively read from the database itself.

The court emphasized that the claims merely required that the runtime engine use or be configured to use data from the database, which is distinct from retrieving or reading it. For example, the ’397 patent recites that a runtime file “utilizes information stored in said database," and the '168 patent describes a runtime engine "configured to generate the website from the objects and style data extracted from the provided database." Nowhere, the appellate court reasoned, do the claims mandate that the runtime engine be the entity performing the data retrieval. Moreover, the court explained that reading embodiments from the specification into the claims without a clear disclaimer or limiting definition was contrary to long-standing claim construction principles (citing Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc), and Hill-Rom Servs., Inc. v. Stryker Corp., 755 F.3d 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2014)).

The appellate court also rejected GoDaddy's arguments based on prosecution history and prior PTAB and district court decisions, concluding that Express had not clearly disclaimed a broader construction in any forum. Nor was there any basis for estoppel since Express had not gained an advantage or prevailed based on a narrower construction in earlier proceedings. Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment on the '397 family and remanded for further proceedings under the corrected construction.

Jury verdict on the ’755 family. Express also appealed the jury's verdict of non-infringement for claims in the '755, '287, and '044 patents. It raised three main challenges: (1) that GoDaddy improperly argued interpretations inconsistent with the court's constructions; (2) that no reasonable jury could have found non-infringement as to the "Player" limitation; and (3) that the evidence compelled a finding that GoDaddy's products met the "registry" and "symbolic name" limitations.

The Federal Circuit rejected all three arguments. First, the court found that Express failed to timely raise objections to any trial arguments or testimony it now claimed were improper. Citing Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Mustek Sys., Inc., 340 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2003), the appellate court held that Express could not preserve claim construction or evidentiary challenges for the first time in a post-trial motion.

Second, on the "Player" limitation, the court upheld the jury's finding that GoDaddy's accused code was not device-dependent and, therefore, did not meet the construction of "Player" as "device-specific code which contains instructions of a device and which is separate from the Application." GoDaddy's expert testified that the accused JavaScript code ran across different browsers and platforms and did not qualify as device-specific. Express had argued that browser-specific adaptation constituted platform-specific behavior, but the court concluded that any such ambiguity in the term "platform" should have been raised at trial, and the jury was entitled to resolve the fact question against Express.

Third, the appellate court found that substantial evidence supported the jury's verdict regarding the "registry" and "symbolic name" limitations. GoDaddy's expert testified that the alleged "registry" in its product was an unstructured file, not a database and that symbolic names were not stored in any such registry or used to evoke web components as claimed. The court concluded that Express failed to demonstrate that no reasonable jury could find against it on those elements.

Conclusion. Thus, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court's construction of "runtime engine" and vacated the summary judgment of non-infringement on the '397 family of patents, remanding for further proceedings. However, it affirmed the jury's verdict of non-infringement on the '755 family and the district court's denial of JMOL and new trial motions. Each party was ordered to bear its own costs.

The Case is No. 23-2265.

Judge: Taranto, R.

Attorneys: James Richard Nuttall (Steptoe LLP) for Express Mobile, Inc. Brian W. LaCorte (Ballard Spahr LLP) for GoDaddy.Com, LLC.

Companies: Express Mobile, Inc.; GoDaddy.Com, LLC

MainStory: TopStory Patent FedCirNews DelawareNews GCNNews