TELEMAC CELLULAR CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. TOPP TELECOM, INC., Defendant-Appellee., 247 F.3d 1316

Summary

Plaintiff was formed with a focus on the rental cellular telephone market. To minimize credit risk, it sought to provide a cellular phone that automatically debited the cost of each call from an available credit account stored within the cellular phone. It filed a patent application describing the relevant technology. The patent disclosed and claimed a phone system including a mobile phone having internal accounting capabilities for performing real-time call debiting. Defendant sold a different system which also used a prepaid cellular telephone. Plaintiff sued defendant, alleging infringement. Defendant moved for summary judgment, alleging plaintiff's patent claims should be declared invalid under 35 U.S.C.S. § 102(b), based on a prior patent. The district court found as a matter of law that none of plaintiff's patent claims was infringed by defendant's system and holding plaintiff's patent invalid. The appellate court affirmed.