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All This Happened, More Or Less.

Posted on | December 4, 2008 | 1 Comment

Vonnegut before he looked like himself
2009-1024 Responsible Me v. Evenflo
SD/FL 06-61736
Judge Daniel Hurley

Plaintiff Responsible Me appeals from the summary judgment decision of Judge Daniel Hurley finding that Evenflo did not infringe 7,134,714, generally directed to a detachable sub-tray for use with trays from car seats, highchairs, strollers and similar seats.

Despite the post's title, not much happened in this case, especially when compared to many other patent cases such as the Taurus.  Still, I had to use it because it is a great line, opening Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

I also like the opening line from Feed by M.T. Anderson, courtesy of my nephew's collection.  Its a "dystopian novel of the postcyberpunk genre" where cerebral Internet implants pipe pop-up ads directly to your brain:

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

Anderson's line might apply to plaintiff's trip to the West Palm court house. 

The case boils down to classic prosecution history (amendment and argument-based) estoppel argument, with the accused infringers winning the day.  In order to overcome prior art rejections during prosecution, plaintiff added claim language and argued that the newly drafted claims were distinguishable over the prior art:

In adding these limitations, the patent attorney for Responsible Me argued to the patent examiner that the claims of the '714 Patent were patentable over the teachings of Semon et al. on the basis that Semon et al. did not teach a drawer subtray that was "only" or "solely" capable of supporting food/beverage items when the drawer subtray was in the extended position. Put another way, the attorney demonstrated that while the prior art drawer-sub-trays could be used to store food and beverage items when in the storage position, the claimed drawer sub-trays could not be used in this manner.

Does removing this feature really make a patentable distinction over the priSitelinks-brilliantor art?  Anyway, Evenflo apparently designed around the claims by . . . making a sub tray that would store items when in the closed position.  Brilliant!

The Court quickly found that the accused product didn't literally infringe the claims:

To hold otherwise would do violence to the "all elements" doctrine and effectively require a rewriting of the claims to eliminate the "solely" and "only" limitations from claims 1, 3 and 4.  Because the accused products include a feature that is expressly excluded from the scope or the claim in the '714 patent, defendants are entitled to summary judgment on the issue of literal infringement as a matter of law.

Having found non-infringement, the Court declined to consider Evenflo's invalidity arguments.

More reading:

Order
Category: Claim Construction, Doctrine of Equivalents

Comments

One Response to “All This Happened, More Or Less.”

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    November 4th, 2009 @ 04:58

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