“The words of a claim are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning as understood by a person ofordinary skill in the art whenread in the context of the specification and prosecution history.” Thorner v. Sony Comput.

The Court “‘first look[s] to, and primarily rel[ies] on, the intrinsic evidence,” which includes the claims, written description, and prosecution history and “‘is usually dispositive.” Personalized Media Comme’ns, LLC v. Apple Inc., 952 F.3d 1336, 1340 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (citation omitted).

Thus resolution of any ambiguity arising from the claims and specification may be aided by extrinsic evidence of usage and meaning of a term in the context of the invention.” Verve, LLC v. Crane Cams, Inc., 311 F.3d 1116, 1119 (Fed. Cir. 2002); see Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 372 U.S. 898, 899 (2014) (explaining that patents are addressed “to those skilled in the relevant art”).

“Baldwin 2 The “object space”is “the 3D position of each feature relative to a coordinate systemrigid to the object,” id., 2:2-4, and the “camera space”is “a reference frame defined with respect to a point on, and therefore rigid to, the [one] camera 16.” Id., 3:63-64. does not set a hard and fast rule that ‘a’ always meansone or more than one.” Harari v. Lee, 656 F.3d 1331, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2011).

With respect to the °814 patent, the parties dispute whether “pose” excludes “surface analysis.” During prosecution, RVT stated that the prior art reference Franke was “directed to surface analysis (i.e., three dimensional location of points), not pose estimation.” D.I.

Specifically, RVT contends that ABB has not produced (1) the source-code specifications for FlexVision or any documents that explain the development or authorship of that source code, (2) any technical documents disclosing the functionalities of the various robots and vision systems into which the FlexVision code (or its functionality) are incorporated, and (3) any sales information for those robots and vision systems.

ABB states that it has produced documents responsive to the remainder of RVT' s request for documents, namely: (1) "git mirrors that show the date and person responsible for every change to the FlexVision code to the extent ABB has that information," and (2) "a spreadsheet providing financial information for every Flex Vision sale, along with purchase orders and invoices for each of those sales."

1 Including the Cognex software library, which RVT contends is partially incorporated into Flex Vision and is responsible for performing certain machine-vision tasks.

RVT also objects to the sufficiency of ABB 's supplemental source code production with respect to Flex Vision, but fails to explain how ABB ' s source code production is deficient (with the exception 3 RVT's "comprehensive spreadsheet" also fails to explain the difference between the "Stickley Wood Table Files" and the "AI Agreements & Misc info on [the] Stickley end table."

Accordingly, the Court hereby orders the parties to meet and confer and, by no later than May 20, 2024, to propose a joint schedule and procedure for narrowing RVT' s asserted claims and ABB' s prior-art references.

RVT attempts to distinguish Wang and Alta Devices on the grounds that there was "no material dispute of fact" in those cases "that the misappropriation would have been discoverable upon reasonable investigation."

As an initial matter, the Court is not convinced that RVT needed the specific details of how: Flex Vision operates to qe on inquiry notice of AJ3B' s alleged misappropri_ation, because the courts in Wang and Alta Devices found that a party is put on inquiry notice of its potential claim against a competitor when that party's former employee retains confidential information in breach of that employee's NDA and joins a competitor.

Thus, in Accenture, the plaintiff's observation of high-level similarities between the parties' products was not a "red flag" that would prompt a prudent person of ordinary intelligence to further investigate whether their trade secrets had been misappropriated.

Accordingly, under the circumstances of this case, the Court finds that RVT had a reasonable opportunity to discover its potential misappropriation claim once it was aware of Dr. Boca's actions-i.e., prior to reviewing ABB ' s technical information.

The similarities of FlexVision and eVisionFactory, in light of Dr. Boca's prior conduct, was sufficient to place RVT on inquiry notice of its potential misappropriation claim against ABB.

When Dr. Boca left RVT and joined ABB in October 2010, he was in possession of two RVT-issued laptops and two RVT-issued external hard drives, which contained RVT’s confidential and proprietary information, including the source code for RVT’s eVF product.

In January 2011, in response to the October 2010 meeting, RVT sent a letter to ABB’s Vice President of Automation Systems with a proposal including exclusive discount pricing based upon unit volume purchases by ABB of the eVF software.

On information and belief, ABB augmented or modified the off-the- shelf version of the Cognex machine-vision library so that the FlexVision software can achieve accurate and consistent camera calibration, object training, and pose estimation.

On information and belief, FlexVision has adopted many techniques from eVF not found in Cognex, including but not limited to (1) the tree-based structure of its “vision solution explorer,” (2) its collection of pattern-matching tools, (3) its usage of “anchor features” with search regions to achieve high levels of speed, (4) its computation of a “center of mass” to describe model origins, (5) its routines that are run on the robot controller itself, (6) its ability to identify the pose of multiple parts in one application, (7) all of its pose-estimation and pattern-validation tools, (8) its abilities to re-run vision tasks with offline saved files, (9) its offering of not only 3D, but also 2D and 2.5D solutions, (10) its use of terms such as “Gold Point,” Exhibit 4 at 220, and “Gold,” which is believed to refer to the “golden position,” (11) its building of 3D models with robot movements, etc. As described in paragraph 96, Cognex is very limited in its 3D accuracy when presented with various real-world pose distortions.

On information and belief, ABB actively induced, encouraged, caused, and materially contributed to Dr. Boca’s unauthorized use of RVT’s copyrighted eVF source code to form the basis of, develop, and create ABB’s FlexVision product by offering Dr. Boca employment in 2010.

Exhibit 5 Automaker Study Finds eVisionFactory Most Accurate 3D Guided Robotics Vision System Silver Spring, Md.

“Determining all six degrees of freedom accurately is one of the greatest challenges in the field of vision guidance for robotics,” said RVT VP, engineering Paul Weidinger.

“Our platform enhanced accuracy beyond either the camera resolution or the robot itself, showing the critical nature of software in the success of robotics in all fields.” The study included a series of tests to gage the repeatability and reproducibility (gage R&R) of positional calculations, an industry standard method that objectively compares the accuracy between vision systems.

Outlined in the chart below, RVT’s two tests displayed a higher accuracy than every other vision system studied in every category: Max Deviation Requirements ±3.0mm

RVT’s eVF™ software platform is installed in hundreds of systems worldwide and operates every day controlling over one-half billion dollars of capital equipment.