Who’s the Boss Now? Yamaha Beats Boss After Claim Construction

Posted on | April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment

2008-1311 Boss Industries v. Yamaha Motor   
D/UT    2:05-cv-422

Boss agreed to non-infringement by Yamaha following Judge Dale Kimball’s order on claim construction.  Asserted are a family of 4 patents, including parent 5,944,380, all related to improved, light-weight snowmobile seats.

The court gave "base" and "base section" the "plain and ordinary meaning" of the  bottom support structure of the snowmobile seat, a construction urged by Yamaha.  The court declined to construe the terms differently for each patent, with Boss arguing  definitions that generally covered cellular structures that provided at least part of the support for the seat.  The court found that  prosecution statements, the specification, and the "rule" that claim terms are presumed to have the same meaning in all patents within a family, all favored Yamaha’s position.

Similarly, the court followed Yamaha’s arguments that "supporting" meant "bearing the weight of" rather than Boss’s "bearing at least part of the weight of."  The court stated that the ordinary meaning meant full, rather than partial, weight bearing, noting that the specification only referred to full.  The court also rejected Boss’s arguments that this interpretation would exclude an embodiment, noting that it was permissible to exclude one embodiment when the patent disclosed multiple embodiments.

The court also construed "light weight" to mean a seat weighing substantially less than 15 pounds, rejecting Boss’s suggested  language about it weighing less than traditional snowmobile seats of similar size.  The court derived the 15 pounds from language in the specification citing 15-18 pounds as the weight of traditional seats, versus 6-8 pounds for the Boss seat.

The court construed several other terms in Yamaha’s favor, finding each to be the "plain and ordinary meaning" as supported by the intrinsic record.  These include:

• "Adjacent" meaning "next to or adjoining," rejecting "close to"

• "Abut" meaning "next to and in contact with," rejecting "adjacent or close to"

• "Space" meaning "an area provided by a particular purpose," rejecting "an empty area"

• "Bottom surface" meaning "the lowermost surface in its entirety," rejecting "boundary forming at least part of the underside"

• "Exterior surface" meaning "a surface exposed to the environment," rejecting "the outside of the seat." 

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