Indect USA Corp. v. Park Assist, LLC

Case: 24-1023   Document: 59     Page: 1    Filed: 01/07/2026




        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.


   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

                 INDECT USA CORP.,
                   Plaintiff-Appellant

                            v.

                  PARK ASSIST, LLC,
                Defendant-Cross-Appellant
                 ______________________

                  2024-1023, 2024-1127
                 ______________________

    Appeals from the United States District Court for the
 Southern District of California in No. 3:18-cv-02409-BEN-
 DEB, Senior Judge Roger T. Benitez.
                  ______________________

                Decided: January 7, 2026
                 ______________________

    PAUL V. STORM, Foley & Lardner LLP, Dallas, TX, ar-
 gued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by RANDY
 PUMMILL; MICHELLE A. MORAN, Milwaukee, WI.

    TOD MATHEW MELGAR, Lippes Mathias LLP, New York,
 NY, argued for defendant-cross-appellant. Also argued by
 SCOTT STIMPSON, Sills Cummis & Gross PC, New York, NY.
                 ______________________
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 2                        INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




     Before HUGHES, STARK, Circuit Judges, and WANG,
                     District Judge. 1
 STARK, Circuit Judge.
     Park Assist LLC (“Park Assist”) is the owner of
 

U.S. Patent No. 9,594,956,

 (the “’956 patent”) directed to
 methods of using camera-based technology for the manage-
 ment of parking spaces. In 2018, Indect USA Corp. (“In-
 dect”) sued Park Assist, seeking declaratory judgments
 that it and its customers do not infringe the ’956 patent and
 that the patent’s claims are invalid. Indect further alleged
 that Park Assist engaged in unfair competition under the
 Lanham Act by threatening to sue Indect’s customers and
 bringing and maintaining suit against one such customer,
 the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority (“Air-
 port”). Park Assist responded with counterclaims alleging
 Indect directly infringed and induced others to infringe the
 ’956 patent.
     Neither party obtained all the relief it sought in the
 district court. Following a jury trial and post-trial motions,
 the district court entered a declaratory judgment that In-
 dect did not infringe the ’956 patent, but denied Indect’s
 requests for judgments of invalidity and unfair competi-
 tion. Park Assist’s requests for declaratory judgments of
 infringement were denied. Both parties now appeal. While
 we agree with the district court on many of the disputed
 issues, and largely affirm, we vacate and remand for fur-
 ther proceedings.
                               I
     Park Assist’s ’956 patent, entitled “Method and system
 for managing a parking lot based on intelligent imaging,”



     1  Honorable Nina Y. Wang, District Judge for the
 United States District Court for the District of Colorado,
 sitting by designation.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                          3



 teaches a camera-based parking lot management system
 capable of determining whether a parking space is occu-
 pied, and methods of using such systems. J.A. 17397. 2 The
 disclosed method provides a means for determining
 whether a parked car is parked in a parking space and
 whether such car is authorized to use that space.
     Representative claim 1 of the ’956 patent recites:
     A method of managing a plurality of parking
     spaces, comprising:
         (a) monitoring a parking space with an im-
         aging device of an imaging unit;
         (b) detecting, by said imaging unit, occu-
         pancy of said parking space;
         (c) assigning said parking space, in which
         said occupancy was detected, an occupied
         status . . .;
         (d) obtaining . . . as a result of said . . . oc-
         cupied status, a single high resolution im-
         age of a vehicle occupying said parking
         space . . .;
         (e) storing at least part of said high resolu-
         tion image . . .;
         (f) displaying a thumbnail image of said
         parking space on a graphic user interface
         (GUI) . . .;
         (g) deciding whether said occupied status is
         incorrect, based on a visual review of said
         thumbnail image on said GUI;




     2 “J.A.” refers to the Non-Confidential Joint Appendix

 filed by Indect (ECF No. 34).
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 4                          INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




         (h) correcting said occupied status . . . if
         said parking space shown in said thumb-
         nail image is vacant . . .;
         (i) extracting from said high resolution im-
         age . . . a permit identifier for said vehicle,
         and comparing said permit identifier with
         at least one parking permit identification
         stored on said storage to determine a per-
         mit status of said parked vehicle; and
         (j) initiating an infringement process for
         said vehicle having said permit identifier
         that fails to coincide with at least one park-
         ing permit identification.
 ’956 pat. at 22:30-23:4.
     Indect sells a parking system, the UPSOLUT (the “Ac-
 cused System”), which Park Assist alleges infringes at least
 claim 1 of the ’956 patent. Park Assist shared its accusa-
 tions about the UPSOLUT system in letters it sent to In-
 dect’s customers and potential customers, writing, in
 pertinent part:
     Park Assist is aware that [Indect] ha[s] submitted
     a [p]roposal . . . offering to sell the INDECT
     UPSOLUT system. . . . The [Indect] Proposal looks
     to offer a system having features and functionality
     that if implemented . . . may infringe the ’956 Pa-
     tent claims. Accordingly, Park Assist . . . requests
     that in awarding any contracts [you] avoid imple-
     menting a system that would infringe on Park As-
     sist’s valuable intellectual property rights. . . .
     [F]ailure to do so will expose the seller and/or user
     of an infringing system to liability for actual dam-
     ages, treble damages for willful[] infringement and
     injunctive relief against the sale or use of infring-
     ing systems.
 J.A. 17330-31.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                       5



     Park Assist also sued one of Indect’s customers, the
 Airport, alleging that it infringed the ’956 patent by using
 Indect’s Accused System. That suit prompted Indect to file
 this action against Park Assist, seeking declaratory judg-
 ments that: (i) Indect did not infringe the ’956 patent, (ii)
 Indect did not induce its customers to infringe the ’956 pa-
 tent, and (iii) the claims of the ’956 patent are invalid as
 obvious. Indect also alleged that Park Assist engaged in
 unfair competition in violation of Section 43(a) of the Lan-
 ham Act, 

15 U.S.C. § 1125

(a), through its written commu-
 nications to Park Assist’s actual and potential customers
 and based on its suit against the Airport. Park Assist coun-
 terclaimed, alleging Indect directly infringed the claims of
 the ’956 patent, induced such infringement, and would con-
 tinue to induce infringement.
      At summary judgment, the district court held that the
 claims of the ’956 patent are not invalid due to indefinite-
 ness. The case proceeded to trial, where a jury found: (i)
 Park Assist failed to prove Indect directly infringed claim
 1 of the ’956 patent, (ii) Indect failed to prove any of the
 claims of the ’956 patent invalid due to obviousness, and
 (iii) Indect failed to prove Park Assist acted with the bad
 faith required to prevail on its Lanham Act unfair compe-
 tition claim. Following trial, the district court denied In-
 dect’s motion for judgment as a matter of law as to
 invalidity. The district court likewise denied Park Assist’s
 post-trial motion to amend the judgment, which sought to
 clarify that Indect was not entitled to a broad declaratory
 judgment that neither Indect’s Accused System nor its cus-
 tomers will be found liable for infringement of the ’956 pa-
 tent in the future. Both parties timely appealed from the
 district court’s entry of judgment against them. We have
 jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295

(a)(1).
                              II
    We review a district court’s ruling on motions for judg-
 ment as a matter of law according to the law of the
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 6                        INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 applicable regional circuit. See Omega Pats., LLC v.
 CalAmp Corp., 

13 F.4th 1361, 1368

 (Fed. Cir. 2021). The
 Ninth Circuit reviews the denial of a motion for judgment
 as a matter of law de novo. See Applied Med. Res. Corp. v.
 U.S. Surgical Corp., 

435 F.3d 1356, 1364

 (Fed. Cir. 2006)
 (citing Lytle v. Carl, 

382 F.3d 978, 982

 (9th Cir. 2004)). The
 Ninth Circuit “will not disturb a jury verdict if it is sup-
 ported by substantial evidence.” Lytle, 

382 F.3d at 982

.
      The Ninth Circuit reviews district courts’ evidentiary
 determinations for abuse of discretion.                    See
 S. Cal. Darts Ass’n v. Zaffina, 

762 F.3d 921, 933

 (9th Cir.
 2014). “A court abuses it[s] discretion when it applies an
 incorrect legal rule or relies upon a factual finding that [is]
 illogical, implausible, or without support in inference that
 may be drawn from the record.” Valle del Sol Inc. v. Whit-
 ing, 

732 F.3d 1006, 1014

 (9th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation
 marks omitted; second alteration in original).
      However, “where a district court rules, as a matter of
 patent law, that a party is precluded from introducing evi-
 dence,” Federal Circuit law applies, and our review of this
 sort of dispute is de novo. TecSec, Inc. v. Adobe Inc., 

978 F.3d 1278, 1286

 (Fed. Cir. 2020). Our own law also sup-
 plies the substantive standards for findings of patent in-
 fringement and patent invalidity. See Fujifilm Corp. v.
 Benun, 

605 F.3d 1366, 1370

 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (per curiam).
 Assessing infringement involves a two-step process: (i) con-
 struing any material, disputed terms, which presents a
 question of law that may be based on subsidiary factual
 findings; and (ii) applying the properly construed claim
 language to the accused device or method and determining
 if every limitation of the claim is present in or practiced as
 part of such device or method, which presents a question of
 fact that we review for clear error.                       See
 EMI Grp. N. Am., Inc. v. Intel Corp., 

157 F.3d 887, 891

 (Fed. Cir. 1998); see also Philip Morris Prods. S.A. v.
 Int’l Trade Comm’n, 

63 F.4th 1328, 1348

 (Fed. Cir. 2023).
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                        7



      Patent claims may be invalid for a variety of reasons,
 including obviousness, indefiniteness, and lack of enable-
 ment. A patent claim is obvious where the differences be-
 tween the claim and the prior art are such that the claim
 as a whole would have been evident to a skilled artisan at
 the time of the invention. See, e.g., Spectrum Pharms., Inc.
 v. Sandoz Inc., 

802 F.3d 1326, 1333

 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Obvi-
 ousness is a question of law based on subsidiary factual
 findings. See 

id.

 “[A] patent is invalid for indefiniteness if
 its claims, read in light of the specification delineating the
 patent, and the prosecution history, fail to inform, with
 reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the
 scope of the invention.” Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instru-
 ments, Inc., 

572 U.S. 898, 901

 (2014). Indefiniteness is a
 question of law to which we accord de novo review, with
 any subsidiary factual findings based on extrinsic evidence
 reviewed for clear error. See Synchronoss Techs., Inc. v.
 Dropbox, Inc., 

987 F.3d 1358

, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2021). Patent
 claims are invalid for lack of enablement if a person of or-
 dinary skill in the art, reviewing the entire patent, would
 be unable to practice them without engaging in undue ex-
 perimentation. See Genentech, Inc. v. Novo Nordisk A/S,
 

108 F.3d 1361, 1365-66

 (Fed. Cir. 1997). “Whether a claim
 satisfies the enablement requirement of 

35 U.S.C. § 112

 is
 a question of law that we review without deference, alt-
 hough the determination may be based on underlying fac-
 tual findings, which we review for clear error.” Amgen Inc.
 v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC, 

987 F.3d 1080, 1084

 (Fed. Cir.
 2021).
     “To prevail on an unfair-competition claim under [S]ec-
 tion 43(a) of the Lanham Act stemming from a patentee’s
 marketplace activity in support of his patent, the claimant
 must first establish that the activity was undertaken in
 bad faith.” Judkins v. HT Window Fashion Corp., 

529 F.3d 1334, 1338

 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Proof of such bad faith re-
 quires “a showing that the claims asserted were objectively
 baseless, meaning no reasonable litigant could realistically
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 8                        INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 expect to prevail in a dispute over infringement of the pa-
 tent.” 

Id. at 1338-39

 (internal quotation marks omitted).
 This bad-faith element of a Lanham Act unfair competition
 claim must be proven by clear and convincing evidence.
 See Golan v. Pingel Enter., 

310 F.3d 1360, 1371-72

 (Fed.
 Cir. 2002).
                               III
                               A
       Indect raises numerous patent issues in its appeal. It
 challenges the district court’s judgment upholding validity
 by arguing (i) claim 1 of the ’956 patent is invalid for indef-
 initeness and lack of enablement because the claimed
 method is impossible to perform; (ii) claim 1 is also invalid
 because the “high resolution image” limitation is indefinite;
 (iii) the district court improperly allowed the jury to resolve
 claim construction disputes; and (iv) the district court
 abused its discretion by excluding evidence that Park As-
 sist had offered to sell a parking system embodying the
 claimed invention more than a year before filing its patent
 application, thereby invalidating the patent under the on-
 sale bar. We agree with the district court on the first three
 of these issues but vacate and remand for a new trial with
 respect to the on-sale bar.
                               1
      Indect contends that claim 1 of the ’956 patent is im-
 possible to perform in its entirety and, therefore, is invalid
 for indefiniteness and lack of enablement. According to In-
 dect, “[i]t is undisputed that step (h) of claim 1 can only be
 taken when a space is vacant and step (i) can only be taken
 when a space is occupied. Thus, it is impossible for all the
 steps of the method to be taken.” Indect Open. Br. at 27;
 see also id. at 13 (describing “fatal impossibility”). The dis-
 trict court rejected these arguments. We do as well.
    For purposes of both indefiniteness and lack of enable-
 ment, Indect’s argument is that the claims, read literally,
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                         9



 require the same parking space to be both occupied and va-
 cant at the same time, which is of course a physical impos-
 sibility. Yet there is no basis in the record for the
 conclusion that a person of ordinary skill in the art would
 read the claims in this nonsensical manner.
      An initial flaw with Indect’s position is that it rests on
 an unstated, and incorrect, assumption that the steps of
 claim 1 of must be undertaken in the order in which they
 are written. 3 Indect assumes that step (i), requiring ex-
 tracting a permit identifier from a high resolution image
 associated with a vehicle occupying a space – must occur
 after or concurrently with step (h), which requires correct-
 ing the occupied status indicated for a space if its thumb-
 nail image shows the space is actually vacant. However,
 “[u]nless the steps of a method actually recite an order, the
 steps are not ordinarily construed to require one.” Al-
 tiris, Inc. v. Symantec Corp., 

318 F.3d 1363, 1369

 (Fed. Cir.
 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, neither
 “as a matter of logic or grammar” must the steps of claim
 1, and particular steps (h) and (i), “be performed in the or-
 der written.” 

Id.

     In any event, there is simply no evidence, much less
 clear and convincing evidence, that a skilled artisan would
 read the steps of claim 1’s method in the manner Indect
 proposes. Naturally, we recognize it would be impossible,
 at a single moment in time, to: (i) obtain an image of a ve-
 hicle in a parking spot the system has identified as occu-
 pied (step (d)), (ii) correct the status of that same space to
 vacant because a visual review the image shows it is actu-
 ally vacant (step (h)), and also (iii) extract a permit


     3 Although the district court did not rely on this conclu-

 sion, and Park Assist does not make this argument, “we
 may affirm a district court judgment on any ground shown
 by the record.” Hydril Co. LP v. Grant Prideco LP,
 

474 F.3d 1344, 1351

 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
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 10                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 identifier from the image of the vehicle occupying the space
 (step (i)). If a space is occupied then it cannot also be va-
 cant, and if it is vacant there is no vehicle from which to
 extract a permit identifier. But the record provides no ba-
 sis to conclude that a person of ordinary skill in the art
 would view the claims as requiring this impossibility. In-
 stead, we agree with the district court that “if the space is
 occupied, step (h) is skipped and steps (i) and (j) are done;
 if the space is vacant, step (h) is performed.” J.A. 76
 (cleaned up). Under this understanding of the claims, the
 claimed method can be entirely performed, although per-
 formance, for any single parking space at any single mo-
 ment, will only involve undertaking either step (h) or step
 (i).
      Moreover, like the district court, we acknowledge that
 the claim language “could have been more clearly written .
 . . to avoid this confusion,” but we are also “mindful that
 courts ‘strive, where[ever] possible, to avoid nonsensical re-
 sults in construing claim language.’” J.A. 48 (quoting
 AIA Eng’g Ltd. v. Magotteaux Int’l S/A, 

657 F.3d 1264

,
 1276 (Fed. Cir. 2011)). “[C]onstruction[s] that render[] all
 embodiments inoperable” are viewed “skeptically.” Net-
 work-1 Techs., Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 

981 F.3d 1015

,
 1025 (Fed. Cir. 2020).
     Indect analogizes this case to two in which we held that
 “impossible” claims were invalid due to indefiniteness. In
 Trustees of Boston University v. Everlight Electronics Co.,
 

896 F.3d 1357, 1362

 (Fed. Cir. 2018), we “safely conclude[d]
 that the specification does not enable what the experts
 agree is physically impossible.” The claim at issue there
 was not enabled because the “specification [did] not teach
 one of skill in the art how to make the claimed semiconduc-
 tor device with a monocrystalline growth layer directly on
 an amorphous buffer layer” because “it is impossible to ep-
 itaxially grow a monocrystalline film directly on an amor-
 phous structure.” 

Id.

 Similarly, in Process Control Corp.
 v. HydReclaim Corp., 

190 F.3d 1350, 1359

 (Fed. Cir. 1999),
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                         11



 we found the challenged claims invalid because they “em-
 bodie[d] an inoperable method that violates the principle of
 conservation of mass.” In each of these cases, the specifi-
 cation could not teach a skilled artisan how to do the im-
 possible; nor could the claims be reasonably construed in
 any manner other than to require accomplishing these im-
 possibilities. Here, by contrast, Park Assist’s claims are
 not physically impossible to perform; a skilled artisan
 would not read them as requiring the physical impossibil-
 ity of a parking space being simultaneously occupied and
 vacant.
     Thus, the situation here is unlike the one we con-
 fronted in Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Weston, Inc.,
 

358 F.3d 1371, 1374

 (Fed. Cir. 2004), on which Indect also
 relies, because there is a reasonable interpretation of the
 claims that leads to a sensible result. Indeed, “Chef Amer-
 ica does not require us to depart from common sense in
 claim construction.” AlterWAN v. Amazon.com, Inc., 

63 F.4th 18, 24

 (Fed. Cir. 2023). In this case, common sense
 leads us to determine that one of skill in the art would rea-
 sonably understand Park Assist’s claim to be one that is
 entirely possible to perform.
     Hence, the district court did not err in failing to find
 claim 1 of the ’956 patent invalid due to indefiniteness or
 lack of enablement.
                                2
      Limitation (d) recites “obtaining . . . as a result of said
 occupied status, a single high resolution image of a vehicle
 occupying said parking space . . . .” Indect argues that this
 limitation renders claim 1 indefinite because a person of
 ordinary skill in the art would lack reasonable certainty as
 to what is, and is not, a “high resolution image.” The dis-
 trict court was not persuaded and neither are we.
    “Claim language employing terms of degree has long
 been found definite where it provide[s] enough certainty to
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 12                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 one of skill in the art when read in the context of the inven-
 tion.” Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 

766 F.3d 1364, 1370

 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (two-judge panel). “[W]hen a claim
 limitation is defined in ‘purely functional terms,’ a deter-
 mination of whether the limitation is sufficiently definite
 is ‘highly dependent on context (e.g., the disclosure in the
 specification and the knowledge of a person of ordinary
 skill in the relevant art area).’” Biosig Instruments, Inc. v.
 Nautilus, Inc., 

783 F.3d 1374, 1378

 (Fed. Cir. 2015). This
 merely requires that the patent provide “some standard for
 measuring that [term of] degree.” Mentor Graphics Corp.
 v. EVE-USA, Inc., 

851 F.3d 1275, 1290

 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (al-
 teration in original). That requirement is satisfied here.
      The district court correctly construed “high resolution
 image,” as used in steps (d), (e), and (i) of claim 1, as an
 “image of sufficient resolution to extract a permit identifier
 such as a license plate number.” J.A. 1692; see also J.A. 26.
 In making this determination, the district court relied on
 the “specification[’s] discuss[ion] [of] ‘high resolution im-
 age’ in the context of reading and extracting a permit iden-
 tifier, such as a license plate, and [its] distinguish[ing]
 between an ‘occupancy image’ and an ‘identification im-
 age,’” which differ in terms of their required readability.
 J.A. 27 (quoting ’956 pat. at 1:48-55, 20:62-65). We agree
 with the district court that this specification support is suf-
 ficient to permit a person of skill in the art to distinguish
 between “high resolution images,” which are those of such
 resolution that one is able to extract and read a license
 place from the image, and those that are not “high resolu-
 tion,” because they cannot be read in this manner. This is
 sufficiently reasonable certainty as to the scope of the
 claims.
     Therefore, we affirm the district court’s determination
 that claim 1 is not indefinite based on its “high resolution”
 limitation.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                       13



                               3
      Indect next accuses the district court of failing in its
 responsibility to construe all material, disputed claim
 terms, see O2 Micro Int’l Ltd. v. Beyond Innova-
 tion Tech. Co., 

521 F.3d 1351, 1373

 (Fed. Cir. 2008), and
 instead improperly delegating the task of claim construc-
 tion to the jury. In particular, Indect asserts that the court
 should have defined the resolution terms of steps (a) and
 (b), and also determined whether steps (i) and (j) are lim-
 ited to identifying cars prohibited from certain parking
 spaces (“blacklisting”) or also extend to identifying cars
 permitted to be in certain spaces (“whitelisting”). The dis-
 trict court committed no error.
      With respect to steps (a) and (b), Park Assist requested
 that the district court construe these steps as applying only
 to low resolution images, but instead the district court told
 the jury to apply the “plain and ordinary meaning” of the
 terms. J.A. 6429. In doing so, the district court adopted
 the position advocated by Indect. J.A. 7761-62 (Indect ar-
 guing “[t]he monitoring (step (a)) and detecting (step (b))
 steps should not be construed to require any particular res-
 olution”). When the district court rejected Park Assist’s
 proposed construction at trial, Indect agreed with the dis-
 trict court that it should not give any specific construction
 of this term. J.A. 13400-03 (district court stating it had
 “made [its] claim construction [already] and [was] not
 about to dabble with [it] anymore,” after which Indect
 counsel stated “[w]e agree”); J.A. 8273 (joint proposed jury
 instructions providing that “[f]or any words in the claim for
 which [the district court] ha[s] not provided you with a def-
 inition, you should apply the plain and ordinary mean-
 ing”). 4 Nor did Indect ever object to any of the testimony


     4 Indect insists it presented this issue to the district

 court “through motions in limine and proposed jury
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 14                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 elicited by Park Assist relating to steps (a) and (b). Indect’s
 arguments on appeal that the district court should have
 nonetheless construed these steps, or that the district court
 should have sua sponte excluded Park Assist’s expert’s tes-
 timony that assumed these steps are limited to low resolu-
 tion images, 5 are waived.            See Conoco, Inc. v.
 Energy & Evt. Int’l, L.C.¸ 

460 F.3d 1349, 1359-60

 (Fed. Cir.
 2006) (“[A] party may not introduce new claim construction
 arguments on appeal or alter the scope of the claim con-
 struction positions it took below.”); see also Marbled Murre-
 let v. Babbitt, 

83 F.3d 1060

, 1066 (9th Cir. 1996) (“By


 instructions,” Indect Open. Br. at 25; see also id. at 53, but
 none of the record citations to which it directs us shows In-
 dect asking the district court to construe claim steps (a)
 and (b) and define the steps as not restricted to low resolu-
 tion images. See J.A. 130, 6503, 7618, 7750, 8220, 8646
 (non-substantive title pages); J.A. 7761-68 (Indect oppos-
 ing construction “requir[ing] any particular resolution”);
 J.A. 6517-21 (discussing steps (h) and/or (j)), 7639-42
 (same); J.A. 7973 (requesting court address, and reject,
 Park Assist’s proposed construction requiring particular
 resolution but not offering any alternative construction);
 J.A. 8271-72 (noting objection to Park Assist’s construction
 requiring lower resolution image for steps (a) and (b) but
 not proposing alternative other than “plain and ordinary
 meaning”); J.A. 8654-55 (final jury instructions);
 J.A. 13387-403 (Indect agreeing no further construction
 was needed regarding the resolution of images in steps (a)
 and (b)).
      5 Park Assist’s invalidity expert opined that the image

 used in step (a) has to be lower in resolution than the image
 collected at step (d) and, further, that her opinions concern-
 ing certain prior art references (the M3 brochure and In-
 tertraffic article) depended on steps (a) and (b) being
 limited to low resolution images. J.A. 14525-27, 14584-85.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                        15



 failing to object to evidence at trial and request a ruling on
 such an objection, a party waives the right to raise admis-
 sibility issues on appeal.”).
     With respect to steps (i) and (j), Indect asserts error in
 the district court’s refusal to determine whether these
 steps are limited to “whitelisting” or if they also extend to
 include “blacklisting.” J.A. 14373, 14520. Claim steps (i)
 and (j) recite “initiating an infringement process for said
 vehicle having said permit identifier that fails to coincide
 with at least one parking permit identification.” ’956 pat.
 at 23:1-4. The district court construed “infringement pro-
 cess” as “a notice of unauthorized parking.” J.A. 33. The
 parties agree that the court’s construction encompasses
 whitelisting. The district court rejected Indect’s request to
 construe step (j) as also encompassing the “blacklisting”
 feature taught in the prior art, but neither did the court
 rule that blacklisting was excluded from the claim.
 J.A. 7973.
      The scope of steps (i) and (j) was relevant to Indect’s
 obviousness defense, and specifically to the question of
 whether Indect’s “blacklisting” prior art references disclose
 an “infringement process” consistent with the court’s con-
 struction. The district court properly viewed this as a fact
 question requiring the jury to apply its construction of “in-
 fringement process” to the prior art, rather than a new
 claim construction dispute requiring judicial resolution as
 a matter of law. See Sage Prods., LLC v. Stewart, 

133 F.4th 1376, 1381

 (Fed. Cir. 2025) (“What the prior art discloses
 is a fact question.”) (cleaned up). Thus, the district court
 did not err in failing to further construe its already-estab-
 lished construction or by instructing the jury to evaluate
 the prior art based on the construction the court provided.
 See generally Function Media, LLC v. Google, Inc.,
 

708 F.3d 1310, 1325

 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (“[T]he district court
 [did not] delegate[] claim construction to the jury . . . espe-
 cially . . . where, as here, the jury was instructed to apply
 the district court’s claim constructions.”).
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 16                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




                               4
      Indect also attempted to prove that the claims of the
 ’956 patent are invalid as obvious based on the on-sale bar.
 To be precise, Indect contended in the district court that a
 Park Assist document memorializing an offer to sell Park
 Assist’s “M3 Parking System” – whose method the parties
 “do[] not dispute. . . is indistinguishable from [Park As-
 sist’s] ’956 patent,” J.A. 52 – to the Cadillac Fairview Chi-
 nook Centre in Calgary, Canada (“Chinook Document” or
 “Chinook”) more than one year before the filing date of the
 ’956 patent invalidates each of the patent’s claims. J.A. 53,
 15606-10. It is undisputed that, for the ’956 patent, “the
 critical date to constitute prior art is May 8, 2010, or one
 year before the filing date of the claimed invention.”
 J.A. 52.
     The district court excluded the Chinook Document
 from evidence on the ground that it “only offers the M3
 Parking System product, not the method the M3 Parking
 System relies upon.” J.A. 53-54. But the court’s conclusion
 that an offer to sell a product is inadmissible when the pa-
 tent also covers a process is erroneous as a matter of law.
 “Where a product embodies essential features of the pa-
 tented invention, a sale of the product is tantamount to a
 sale of the process performed by that product and thus cre-
 ates an on-sale bar to the process claims as well.” BASF
 Corp. v. SNF Holding Co., 

955 F.3d 958, 970

 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (cleaned up); see also Robotic Vision Sys. v.
 View Eng’g, Inc., 

249 F.3d 1307, 1311

 (Fed. Cir. 2001)
 (holding that product can be invalidating prior art to
 method claim if product itself discloses some or all steps of
 claimed method); Quest Integrity USA, LLC v. Cokebust-
 ers USA Inc., 

924 F.3d 1220, 1228

 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (“Perfor-
 mance of a claimed method for compensation, or a
 commercial offer to perform the method, can also trigger
 the on-sale bar, even where no product is sold or offered for
 sale.”).
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                       17



     In reaching its decision, the district court relied on
 W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 

721 F.2d 1540, 1550

 (Fed. Cir. 1983). There, we applied the longstanding
 principle that “method patents [a]re exhausted by the sale
 of    an    item    that     embodie[s]      the    method.”
 Quanta Comp., Inc. v. LG Elecs., Inc., 

553 U.S. 617, 629

 (2008). While the product in W.L. Gore did not sufficiently
 embody the steps of the patented method at issue, here a
 reasonable factfinder could find that Park Assist’s M3
 Parking System does sufficiently disclose the steps of the
 method of claim 1, especially given that in the district court
 the parties did “not dispute” that the Chinook document
 was “indistinguishable from [the] ’956 patent.” J.A. 52; but
 see Park Assist Open. Br. at 53 (contending, on appeal, that
 “Chinook document did not disclose steps of the patented
 method”).
      The exclusion of the potentially invalidating Chinook
 Document, which could be reasonably found to constitute
 an offer for sale of a product sufficiently disclosing the pa-
 tented process more than a year prior to the filing of the
 patent application, was based on a clear error of law and,
 thus, an abuse of discretion. Therefore, we reverse the dis-
 trict court’s exclusion of the Chinook Document, vacate the
 judgment that the claims of the ’956 patent are not invalid,
 and remand for a new trial on obviousness based on the on-
 sale bar.
                               B
     Indect next appeals the district court’s denial of its mo-
 tion for judgment as a matter of law on its unfair competi-
 tion claim. Indect sought to prove that Park Assist violated
 Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act by sending letters to In-
 dect’s current and potential customers and by suing one of
 its customers, the Airport, despite Park Assist’s alleged
 lack of evidence that the Airport was actually infringing
 any claim of the ’956 patent. Indect faults the district court
 for excluding evidence relating to the Airport litigation.
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 18                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 See J.A. 14153 (instructing jury to “disregard everything
 about the San Diego Airport with the exception that there
 were letters that were sent out referencing the fact that
 there was that litigation pending and that they considered
 it to . . . [have] substantial commercial value”). We agree
 with Indect that the district court’s decision to exclude this
 evidence was an abuse of discretion.
      To prevail on its claim under Section 43(a) of the Lan-
 ham Act, Indect was required to prove that Park Assist
 acted in bad faith, which Indect tried to show by proving
 that Park Assist brought “objectively baseless” patent liti-
 gation against the Airport. See generally Dominant Semi-
 conductors Sdn. Bhd. v. OSRAM GmbH, 

524 F.3d 1254

 (Fed. Cir. 2008). In an effort to meet its burden, Indect
 proffered evidence that Park Assist had filed suit against
 the Airport, an Indect customer, based on the Airport’s use
 of Indect’s UPSOLUT system, notwithstanding that Park
 Assist had no affirmative evidence of infringement. Indect
 further alleged that Park Assist knew or should have
 known from publicly available information that the Airport
 was not, in fact, infringing. The district court cited Indect’s
 evidence when it denied Park Assist’s motion for summary
 judgment of no unfair competition, explaining that “Indect
 ha[d] at least created a triable issue of fact as to whether
 Park Assist’s continued pursuit of the Airport Case was ob-
 jectively baseless.” J.A. 65; see also J.A. 80 (denying Park
 Assist motion in limine that sought “categorical exclusion
 of evidence related to the airport lawsuit and patent notice
 letters sent, items th[e] Court found relevant to Indect’s
 claims”).
     Then, at trial, the district court changed course, in-
 structing Indect:
      You can certainly put on evidence to show that the
      letters were sent out, and you can maybe put on
      some evidence as to the fact that they [i.e., Park
      Assist] thought that they got some commercial
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                       19



     advantage out of the litigation, but we’re not going
     to talk about whether or not the lawsuit itself had
     merit.
     J.A. 137; see also J.A. 133 (“[B]ecause, if we’re going to
 go into that, we’re going to be here for a lot longer.”);
 J.A. 6193-97 (explaining need to avoid “trial within a
 trial”); J.A. 13379 (“[W]e’re not going to relitigate that
 case.”). The district court cited as support for its eviden-
 tiary decision the fact that the Airport case had, subse-
 quent to the summary judgment ruling, settled and could
 not be appealed.
     Park Assist insists that the district court properly ex-
 cluded the evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 ,
 but the district court did not cite Rule 403 nor expressly
 weigh the probative value of the evidence against the coun-
 tervailing concerns of the Rule (e.g., unfair prejudice, con-
 fusion, waste of time). Nor was the Airport case ever
 resolved on the merits, as Park Assist mistakenly suggests.
 Park Assist continued to press its counterclaim that Indect
 induced the Airport to infringe even after the Airport case
 itself was dismissed. Most importantly, as the district
 court correctly held at the summary judgment stage, In-
 dect’s evidence, if credited by the jury, could have sup-
 ported a verdict in favor of Indect on its unfair competition
 claim, as it could have led to a finding that Park Assist’s
 suit against the Airport was objectively baseless and,
 hence, Park Assist acted in bad faith.
     The court should have allowed introduction of evidence
 about the Airport litigation to permit the jury to fully eval-
 uate whether Indect proved its claim. See generally
 Tex. Digit.     Sys.,     Inc.     v.    Telegenix,      Inc.,
 

308 F.3d 1193, 1216-19

 (Fed. Cir. 2002), abrogated on other
 grounds by Phillips v. AWH Corp., 

415 F.3d 1303

 (Fed. Cir.
 2005) (en banc). By instead excluding such evidence, the
 district court abused its discretion. Therefore, we reverse
 the district court’s admissibility determination, vacate the
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 20                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 judgment of no liability for unfair competition, and remand
 for a new trial on the bad faith element of Indect’s Lanham
 Act claim. 6
                               IV
     We turn now to Park Assist’s cross-appeal. Park Assist
 challenges the district court’s (i) determination that the
 preamble of claim 1 is limiting; (ii) construction of “display-
 ing a thumbnail image” as requiring “near real-time” feed-
 back; and (iii) grant of Indect’s request for a declaratory
 judgment of no infringement by any of Indect’s past, pre-
 sent, or future customers. We agree with the district court
 on the first two of these issues but vacate its declaratory
 judgment of non-infringement and remand for further pro-
 ceedings.
                               A
      “We review claim construction de novo, except for sub-
 sidiary facts based on extrinsic evidence, which we review
 for clear error.” Power Integrations, Inc. v. Fairchild Sem-
 iconductor Int’l, Inc., 

904 F.3d 965, 971

 (Fed. Cir. 2018)


      6 Park Assist asks that if we decide to order further

 proceedings on Indect’s unfair competition claim, as we
 have, we also “revise[]” the district court’s order to “allow
 in Park Assist’s strong evidence that the Airport was in-
 fringing;” it further asks us to vacate the jury’s finding that
 Indect met its burden on the non-bad faith elements of its
 claim. Park Assist Open. Br. at 30. As Park Assist did not
 include these requests in its cross-appeal, and only ad-
 dressed them in passing in its response to Indect’s appeal,
 we cannot grant this relief. See AquaTex Indus., Inc. v.
 Techniche Sols., 

419 F.3d 1374, 1379

 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (“Be-
 cause [a party] failed to cross appeal [an issue] properly,
 we decline to consider it.”). The district court will deter-
 mine in the first instance what evidence relating to the Air-
 port litigation should be admitted at the new trial.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                          21



 (citing Teva Pharms. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz Inc. 

574 U.S. 318

 (2015)). We agree with the district court’s challenged claim
 constructions.
                                1
      The district court determined that claim 1’s preamble,
 “[a] method of managing a plurality of parking spaces,” is
 limiting. Under this view of the claims, the patented
 method is not practiced if it is applied to just a single park-
 ing space. J.A. 7625 (“The claim language makes no sense
 divorced from management of parking facilities.”). We
 agree with the district court.
      “Whether to treat a preamble as a limitation is a deter-
 mination resolved only on review of the entire[] . . . patent
 to gain an understanding of what the inventors actually in-
 vented and intended to encompass by the claim.” Cata-
 lina Mktg.     Int’l    Inc.   v.    Coolsavings.com,      Inc.,
 

289 F.3d 801, 808

 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (internal quotation
 marks omitted; alterations in original). A preamble may
 be limiting “if it recites essential structure or steps, or if it
 is necessary to give life, meaning, and vitality to the claim.”
 

Id.

 (internal quotation marks omitted).
      Here, the preamble gives “life, meaning, and vitality”
 to the claims. As is evident from the intrinsic evidence, the
 claims were intended by the inventors to apply only to a
 “plurality of parking spaces,” not to a single parking spot.
 The specification repeatedly refers to “slots” and “spaces,”
 which are both plural nouns, and explicitly teaches that the
 patent “relates to the management of a parking lot,” which
 necessarily consists of more than one parking spot. ’956
 pat. at 1:12-31. Additional “objectives of the . . . invention”
 are to “find available parking in a parking lot,” to “find[] [a]
 car within a parking lot,” to “enable preferential parking .
 . . within [a] parking lot,” to “reduce parking lot energy con-
 sumption,” and to “improve parking lot security,” all of
 which are plainly directed towards parking lots, and not to
 single parking spaces. Id. at 2:1-26.
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 22                      INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




     The systems and methods of the ’956 patent would not
 be necessary for management of a single parking space.
 The preamble, which introduces the concept of “managing
 a plurality of parking spaces” and is the only portion of the
 claim that does so, is necessary in order to give meaning to
 the claim and prevent it from, improperly, reading on a sin-
 gle parking space. We affirm the district court’s judgment
 that the preamble is limiting.
                              2
     The district court additionally adopted Indect’s pro-
 posed construction of step (f)’s “displaying a thumbnail im-
 age” as meaning “displaying a small near real-time image
 of a picture of said parking space on the computer screen.”
 J.A. 8266. In reaching this conclusion, the district court
 observed that while the specification disclosed an embodi-
 ment allowing for updates to occur as infrequently as every
 ten minutes, it “also teaches that the thumbnail is updated
 every time a vehicle enters or exits a parking space.”
 J.A. 31. We agree with the district court that “the intent of
 the invention is in part to ‘provide real-time feedback,’ and
 the ten-minute threshold is merely a failsafe provision de-
 signed as a back-up to an undetected entry or exit,” which
 necessarily means that the reviews must occur, in the
 usual course, in under ten minutes. J.A. 31 (quoting ’956
 pat. at 14:58-61).
     The near real-time construction does not improperly
 import a limitation from the specification into the claims.
 Rather, the district court correctly construed the claim lan-
 guage in light of the specification, which specifies that the
 ’956 patent is clearly directed to “enabl[ing] all parking
 slots 15 to be surveyed in real time.” ’956 pat. at 14:35-36;
 see    also    Eon-Net     LP     v.    Flagstar    Bancorp,
 

653 F.3d 1314, 1321

 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (finding no improper
 importation of limitation from specification where “[t]he
 written description repeatedly and consistently define[d]
 the invention” as including the limitation). The steps of
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                      23



 claim 1 that follow step (f) – namely, steps (g) and (h),
 which require review of the thumbnail image and, if neces-
 sary, correction of the occupancy status of a parking spot
 based on the image – cannot be performed if the thumb-
 nails are outdated and inaccurate. Thus, we affirm the dis-
 trict court’s construction.
                              B
     Finally, Park Assist objects to the broad scope of the
 district court’s declaratory judgment of non-infringement,
 which extends to past, present, and future customers’ use
 of Indect’s Accused System. In granting Indect’s Third
 Claim for Declaratory Relief, the district court insulated
 Indect from all liability for induced infringement relating
 to the accused UPSOLUT system, no matter how the sys-
 tem is implemented, by whom, or when. Because this ex-
 tensive relief is not supported by sufficient findings, we
 vacate the district court’s declaratory judgment and re-
 mand for further proceedings.
     Park Assist challenges the district court’s declaratory
 judgment of non-infringement by Indect’s customers on
 multiple grounds: the absence of findings that the
 UPSOLUT system is incapable of infringing, Indect’s lack
 of standing, and the district court’s lack of subject matter
 jurisdiction. 7 Indect responds principally by relying on the
 “Kessler Doctrine,” which prohibits patentees from contin-
 uing to assert infringement against users of a product that




     7 Park Assist also contends that both judgments of non-

 infringement (i.e., no direct infringement by Indect and no
 induced infringement of Indect’s customers) should be re-
 versed because they are based on incorrect claim construc-
 tions (of the preamble and “displaying a thumbnail
 image”). As we have affirmed the district court’s construc-
 tions, this contention is unavailing.
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 24                       INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC




 has been found not to infringe.       See Kessler v. Eldred,
 

206 U.S. 285

 (1907).
     The Kessler Doctrine “allow[s] an adjudged non-in-
 fringer to avoid repeated harassment for continuing its
 business as usual post-final judgment in a patent action
 where circumstances justify that result.” Brain Life, LLC
 v. Elekta Inc., 

746 F.3d 1045, 1056

 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (inter-
 nal emphasis omitted). We have described the Kessler Doc-
 trine as “granting a ‘limited trade right’ that attaches to [a]
 product itself.” In re PersonalWeb Techs. LLC, 

961 F.3d 1365

, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2020). Importantly, the scope of that
 right is only so far as necessary “to protect any products as
 to which the manufacturer established a right not to be
 sued for infringement,” and discerning that extent requires
 “an adjudication on the merits” of the claim of infringe-
 ment. 

Id. at 1379

.
      Here, there has been no adjudication of whether the
 UPSOLUT system, in all of its actual and potential imple-
 mentations, is non-infringing. To the contrary, the district
 court expressly refused to make such a determination. See
 J.A. 163 (“[T]he [c]ourt will not delve into the evidence to
 determine whether Indect’s Accused System is capable of
 infringing.”). The sole infringement finding in the record
 is the jury’s answer of “No” to the following question:
      Has Park Assist LLC (“Park Assist”) proven by a
      preponderance of the evidence that Indect has di-
      rectly infringed or is directly infringing claim 1 of
      the ’956 patent by performing every required step
      of the claimed method?
 J.A. 8520. This is not a finding that Indect’s UPSOLUT
 system does not, and cannot, infringe claim 1. Thus, even
 assuming Indect had standing, and further assuming the
 district court had jurisdiction, the factual premise required
 for the broad relief granted by the district court – a finding
 that UPSOLUT cannot be used in an infringing manner –
 is, at present, missing.
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 INDECT USA CORP. v. PARK ASSIST, LLC                      25



     Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s grant of In-
 dect’s Third Claim for Declaratory Relief. On remand, the
 district court, in its discretion, may, if asked, assess
 whether the UPSOLUT is capable of infringement. Alter-
 natively, the district court might wait to assess infringe-
 ment until after the further proceedings we are ordering
 with respect to validity. If those proceeding lead to a judg-
 ment of invalidity, that determination would impact
 whether the district court can exercise jurisdiction over the
 infringement claims and counterclaims, given that an in-
 valid claim cannot be infringed. See TypeRight Key-
 board Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., 

374 F.3d 1151, 1157

 (Fed.
 Cir. 2004) (“[I]nvalidity operates as a complete defense to
 infringement for any product, forever.”) (internal quotation
 marks omitted).
                              V
     We have considered the parties’ remaining arguments
 and find they lack merit. Accordingly, for the foregoing
 reasons, the district court’s judgment is affirmed-in-part,
 reversed-in-part, vacated-in-part, and remanded for fur-
 ther proceedings consistent with this Opinion.
     AFFIRMED-IN-PART, REVERSED-IN-PART,
       VACATED-IN-PART, AND REMANDED
                           COSTS
     Each party to bear its own costs.