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D. Murali

... like a satellite in the sky. That's what this patent case that came up recently before a US court is all about.

It is not only mortals who find it difficult to rise above disputes. Benjamin Franklin once said, "Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so. It is not so. It is so. It is not so." One may dispute Franklin's opinion, but let me lead you to a case that is much above Earth level: the Space Systems/Loral, Inc vs Lockheed Martin Corporation dispute that recently came up before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

"Loral is the owner of the `375 patent for an improved method of maintaining the orientation and attitude of a satellite in space," reads the text of judgment, narrating the facts. Satellites in orbit around the earth tend to be pulled out of their proper position by the gravitational effects of the sun, earth, and moon, explain the judges.

"To maintain the requisite position the satellite conducts `station-keeping manoeuvres' by firing its thrusters, based upon measurements of its position."

Such manoeuvres may not achieve their aim in the first go; they may over-correct or introduce new errors in position and orientation.

So, a second firing is conducted to correct the errors of the first firing. No empty firing as in a videogame, you'd appreciate, but happening out there in space, where every firing needs fuel; on-board supply of fuel is limited, and depletion of fuel can bring down the useful life of the satellite. This is where Loral's patent helps by reducing fuel consumption and enhancing the efficiency of the corrective procedures.

How does it work? "The satellite first estimates the probable correction based on historical data from prior station-keeping manoeuvres, and conducts a first firing of the thrusters based on the estimated correction. This is called the `prebias' step of the modulating response. After the prebias firing, the satellite measures the remaining actual error in its position, adds the actual error to the historical error, and conducts a second firing," paraphrases the judgment, though the tech-savvy may like to read the extract from the patent claim in the text speaking of `actual disturbance torque with respect to said axis' and so forth.

When Loral found Lockheed infringing its patent, Lockheed argued that the patent claim specification did not adequately describe "the second step in which the satellite calculates the position after the first firing and performs the second firing of the thrusters".

At the district court level, Lockheed tasted victory, but the Court of Appeals opined differently.

It is interesting that the judges paid attention to technical details that can go over the heads of most of us.

Read these lines: "The roll and pitch sensors provide position and rate information. This information is passed through a lowpass filter to minimise noise in the signal. The filtered position and rate information are summed and passed through compensation networks, which compensate for the delay between the sensing of the error and the correction of the error... Prebias information is fed directly into the pulse-width, pulse frequency (PWPF) modulating devices. The sum of the actual and historical error from Item 96 is also fed into the PWPF modulating devices."

The specification describes the two modulating steps of the claim, ruled the court, reversing the earlier verdict of the district court. A commonsense interlude that Lockheed provided was to argue that the second step need not always be performed. True, said Loral; for, "there may be occasions when the second step need not be performed because the prebias correction was adequate and no actual error remained after the first firing." Unless, perhaps, somebody was firing indiscriminately as in videogames.

Instruction, narrow and broad

ANOTHER case that came up before the Court of Appeals was that of Nazomi Communications, Inc vs Arm Holdings, Plc, Arm Ltd, and Arm, Inc. At stake was Nazomi's `215 patent: "a Java hardware accelerator which can be used to quickly translate Java bytecodes into native instructions for a central processing unit (CPU)."

If you feel that intimidating, the judgment clarifies: "In computer programming, a series of translations occurs between what is written by a human programmer, and the program that is actually executed by the computer hardware. This appeal focuses on one of these translations."

Two types of memory organisation are used to store information in computers, explains the court. "Stack-based memories store information on a last-in, first-out basis. This approach is analogous to a stack of papers in an inbox. To access a paper at the bottom of the stack, a reader must first remove all of the papers above it. Register-based memories, on the other hand, store and retrieve data according to the exact location of each data item, much like an arrangement of post office boxes... The reader simply identifies and finds the `box' that contains the desired data, which can be instantly retrieved." Doesn't that read simpler than how your tutor instructed you?

Java bytecodes are written for computers that use a `stack-based' approach, whereas most modern processors use a `register-based' approach, distinguishes the judgment. "Translation of Java bytecodes into a form usable by register-based processors requires translation of Java bytecodes into the `native instructions' of a register-based processor."

Okay, what was the dispute? "The parties disputed the meaning of the term `instruction'." According to Nazomi, instruction is "a command that specifies or causes performance of an operation or function." ARM preferred a narrower definition - "that an instruction is provided to the processor at its input and thus must be recognisable to the decoder". ARM sought to distinguish between `instructions' and `control signals' which, it asserted, are the signals generated by the processor's decoder that control downstream hardware.

Remanding the case, the Court of Appeals instructed the district court to look at `instruction' more in detail. "The trial court may find value, for example, in requesting a set of competing infringement charts, not evident in the record before this court, rather than the thousands of lines of unhelpful computer code," is a guidance that the judgment lays down. "Such charts would assist the court in its comparison of every element in the asserted claims with the accused device."

On instruction, there is William Blake's insight: that the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Talking of patents, however, one may say that tigers of law who help in drafting may be wiser than the programming horses!

Picture by A. Roy Chowdhury

Cases@TheHindu.co.in

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