Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Concurrent Ventures, LLC and Xtream Edge, Inc. sued Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and Pensando Systems, Inc. for patent infringement in the Western District of Texas in March 2024. The case was transferred to the Northern District of California in November 2025. The five asserted patents address communication efficiency between CPUs and other network components. They cover hardware load distribution (the '596 patent), SATA/SAS storage abstraction (the '767 patent), data flow processing platforms (the '753 and '943 patents), and network connection optimization (the '634 patent).
The parties disputed eleven terms. The district's local rules allow ten, but the court granted defendants' oral motion at the hearing to construe the eleventh, which had been briefed before transfer. Defendants also sought leave to file a term chart and inventor deposition excerpts. The court applied the Phillips framework, giving terms their ordinary meaning to a skilled artisan absent lexicography or disavowal, and resolved scope disputes even where a party urged plain meaning.
The Court’s Holding
On the '596 patent, "queue implemented in hardware" has its plain meaning, which does not exclude software intervention, and is not indefinite. The claims recite software instructions that read a hardware reservation register and direct commands to the queue. The court would not adopt a construction excluding those embodiments, and it discounted defendants' expert as contradicted by the intrinsic record. "Register" also has its plain meaning, because nothing in the intrinsic record supported defendants' "set of flip-flops" definition. On the '767 patent, "abstraction protocol" is not a means-plus-function term and is not indefinite. A skilled artisan would read it as a class of simplified protocols that the claims require to be full-duplex with full command queuing. "Storage media device interface" means an interface that communicates with the storage media device, without defendants' physical, command-and-data, or edge-controller limitations.
On the '753 patent, "interleaved memory" means an arrangement of different types of memory alternately accessed to achieve an average access bandwidth. The court adopted defendants' wording because the specification's only description ties the term to that goal. It declined to consider plaintiffs' arguments, first raised at the hearing, that averaging and alternation need not be perfect. "Swapped memory over a specified address range" has its plain meaning, understood as information moved between memory and non-volatile storage. The "swappable pods or cards" terms are not indefinite and mean one or more removable, insertable, or replaceable pods or cards. On the '943 patent, "programmable logic device" means an integrated circuit with user-programmable electronic circuitry. Prosecution statements support the integrated circuit requirement, but users need not alter the circuits' connection pattern.
On the '634 patent, "geographical area" receives its plain meaning, because whether an IP address qualifies is an infringement question for the jury. "Network connected device" is not indefinite, because defendants did not show by clear and convincing evidence that a device cannot send information to itself. "Transmission bandwidth" has its plain meaning, because plaintiffs' inter partes review statements distinguishing a prior-art bandwidth ceiling used to admit new calls were not a clear and unmistakable disclaimer. The court denied leave to file the inventor deposition evidence as largely irrelevant to objective claim meaning and unable to change any construction.
Key Takeaways
- A claim reciting a queue "implemented in hardware" can still cover software intervention when the claims and specification assign some queue functions to software.
- Extrinsic evidence that registers commonly contain flip-flops did not make flip-flops a claim requirement, and a construction that renders "implemented in hardware" redundant is disfavored.
- Indefiniteness challenges supported mainly by conclusory expert testimony failed under the clear and convincing evidence standard.
- Prosecution disclaimer requires a clear and unmistakable statement; distinguishing prior art for using a bandwidth ceiling to admit new calls did not surrender ceilings generally.
Why It Matters
This is an interlocutory claim construction order in a pending case, not a final judgment, and as an unreported district court ruling it has no binding precedential weight. It illustrates how the court treats hardware and software boundaries, section 112(f) arguments, and disclaimer arguments. The order does not decide infringement or any invalidity theory beyond the indefiniteness challenges it rejected, and it left the IP-address question for the jury.
The court set a case management conference for November 20, 2026, with an updated joint statement due November 13, 2026.