District of Delaware Judge Richard G. Andrews has granted to Adobe renewed judgment of noninfringement as a matter of law, upsetting a jury verdict that awarded ViaTech Technologies, Inc. nearly $34M in damages. Claim 1 of the only tried patent contains an element—a “license monitor and control mechanism”—that the court construed as requiring means-plus-function treatment. In his Markman order, Judge Andrews pointed to various portions of the patent specification that identified structures for performing each of two recited functions, but at trial, per the court, ViaTech’s expert failed to point to the right passages, the passages corresponding to the first of those two recited functions, “communicating with a dynamic license database”. Lacking this supportive evidence, the infringement verdict, and the related damages award, must fall.