The inventor of a device that can help recover a lost or stolen computer was unable to prevail in her patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Google.
Carolyn Hafeman patented the “Retriever,” which locks a computer’s screen and provides information on how to return a computer to its rightful owner.
In 2021, Hafeman sued LG Electronics for in the federal court of West Texas for patent infringement. She alleged that LG phones and tablets were equipped with “Find My Device” featured from Google and Microsoft that violated her patents.
Google and Microsoft entered the legal fray and challenged the validity of Hafeman’s patents.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled in favor of the tech giants, stating that Hafeman’s invention is unpatentable because a European company called Jenne had already introduced a similar device.
Jenne’s device allows the lock-screen information to be changed remotely “without assistance by a user with the computer,” according to the Board.
Hafeman appealed the Board’s decision to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which also ruled in favor of Google and Microsoft in an opinion written by Circuit Judge Hughes.
He noted that Hafeman argued that “without assistance” means the user “cannot provide any assistance whatsoever (besides turning on power) to receive return and recovery information, including the establishment of an Internet connection.”
Hughes agreed with the Board, stating that “`without assistance by a user’ modifies the action of initiating or changing return information. It does not limit the unrecited action of establishing an Internet connection in the first instance.”
In addition, Hughes agreed with the Board that commercial praise for the Retriever product mostly focuses on its non-patentable elements, “namely that the Retriever includes a verbal alarm component.
“Ms. Hafeman’s arguments to the Board only briefly mentioned Google and Microsoft’s Find My Device programs – she never stated that those programs were evidence of copying.” he wrote.
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