Holding: Expert opinion based on unsupported evidence is not sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact to avoid summary judgment. When evidence precludes a reasonable finding of a fact that the plaintiff must prove to prevail on a claim in its complaint, summary judgment for the defendant is appropriate.
Mirror Worlds owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,006,227; 7,865,538; and 8,255,439. These patents are directed to methods of storing and presenting data on a computer in chronological streams. The claims of the ‘227 Patent recite a “main stream” that receives each data unit, such as text, audio, or video files, received or generated by the computer system. The ‘538 Patent and the ‘439 Patent further require the display of a “glance view” that automatically shows an abbreviated version of the stored document when a cursor is hovered over the document.
Mirror Worlds sued Facebook for patent infringement of each of these patents, alleging that the backend computer systems that operate Facebook’s News Feed, Timeline, and Activity Log features meet the chronologically-ordered main stream and glance view limitations of the claims of its patents. On summary judgment, the district court found Facebook not to infringe the Mirror Worlds patents.
At the Federal Circuit, Mirror Worlds argued that the district court overlooked the evidence presented by its expert witness regarding the glance view limitation. However, Mirror Worlds’ expert failed to present admissible evidence, since his testimony relied upon screen shots from unauthenticated, third-party websites and conclusory statements about Facebook’s source code. In contrast, Facebook’s expert presented authenticated screenshots showing that their hover-activated dialog boxes only showed information about the source or author and not a summary of the information contained in the document.
As to the “main stream” requirement of the ‘227 Patent, the Federal Circuit focused its analysis on the requirement that the main stream receives “each data unit received by or generated by the computer system.” The district court broadly construed the term “data unit” as any item of information received by the computer system. Therefore, under this claim construction, the claims of the ‘227 Patent require that virtually all data and files received by the backend computer system must be included in the chronologically-ordered main stream. The Federal Circuit upheld this broad construction since nothing in the specifications limited the term “data unit” to a certain format or subject matter.
Facebook’s Timeline system includes TimelineDB, a database that stores information about actions taken by Facebook users, similar to the main stream limitation in the Mirror Worlds patents. The Timeline Aggregator receives and uses information that is eventually presented to users. In particular, the Timeline Aggregator uses a coefficient score that describes the strength of a user’s relationship to other users to help determine what information should be displayed to a user. Mirror Worlds only provided conclusory evidence that all the data and files used by Timeline Aggregator was stored in TimelineDB. Mirror Worlds’ more specific evidence was generally limited solely to data related to user actions rather than all data units. In contrast, Facebook produced specific evidence that Timeline Aggregator received data related to the coefficient score that was not stored in TimelineDB. The Federal Circuit held that the unsupported opinions of Mirror Worlds’ expert were insufficient to show a genuine issue of material fact and confirmed the district court’s ruling of summary judgment of non-infringement.
Federal Circuit Precedential 
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