Synchronoss v. Dropbox: a patent infringement suit defeated on software-versus-hardware grounds

Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. sued Dropbox for infringing three U.S. patents related to synchronizing data across multiple internet-connected devices. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey and later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

During claim construction the district court invalidated one of the asserted patents as indefinite. On 17 June 2019 the court granted Dropbox summary judgment on the remainder: it held that Dropbox did not infringe the two surviving patents and also found a patent invalid. A central reason was that the patent claims, as construed, required hardware, whereas Dropbox's accused product existed entirely in software — and Synchronoss had agreed that a claimed 'device' could not be software completely detached from hardware. Distributing software alone therefore did not infringe claims that required a hardware component.

Synchronoss appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which on 12 February 2021 affirmed the findings of invalidity and non-infringement, ending the case in Dropbox's favor.