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Nature of Suit Code: 830
Nature of Suit: Patent
Cause of Action: 

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NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

TEASHOT.LLC, 

a Colorado limited liability company,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTERS, INC., 

a Delaware corporation, 

KEURIG, INCORPORATED, 

a Delaware corporation, AND 

STARBUCKS CORPORATION, 

a Washington corporation,

Defendants-Appellees.

______________________ 

2014-1323

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Colorado in No. 1:12-CV-00189, Judge William 

J. Martinez.

______________________ 

Decided: January 5, 2015 

______________________ 

ROBERT R. BRUNELLI, Sheridan Ross P.C., of Denver, 

Colorado, argued for plaintiff-appellant. With him on the 

brief were JOSEPH E. KOVARIK and DAVID B. KELLIS. 

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2 TEASHOT.LLC v. GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTER

MICHAEL A. ALBERT, Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C., of 

Boston, Massachusetts, argued for defendants-appellees. 

With him on the brief were GERALD B. HRYCYSZYN and 

HUNTER D. KEETON. Of counsel on the brief were AARON 

P. BRADFORD and ALEXANDER C. CLAYDEN, Lathrop & 

Gage LLP, of Denver, Colorado. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, MOORE and CHEN, Circuit 

Judges.

PROST, Chief Judge. 

Teashot.LLC (“Teashot”) appeals from a final judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado 

of non-infringement of U.S. Patent No. 5,895,672 (“’672 

patent”) in favor of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.,

Keurig, Inc., and Starbucks Corp. (collectively, “Green 

Mountain”). For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

I. Patent

The ’672 patent seeks to adapt prior art coffee pod 

machines to make tea without the attendant weak taste 

from the short brewing time. ’672 patent col. 1 l. 63–col. 2 

l. 19. The ’672 patent thus teaches the use of special tea 

composition in the known brewing pod or container as 

reflected in representative claim 1:

1. A tea extraction system for production of a serving of tea extract in a coffee brewing device, comprising:

(a) a tea extraction container for containing a tea 

composition, said tea extraction container comprising a sealed body having at least one internal 

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TEASHOT.LLC v. GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTER 3

compartment, said internal compartment containing said tea composition; 

wherein said sealed body is constructed of a water-permeable material which allows flow of a fluid through said sealed body to produce a tea 

extract from said tea composition; and,

(b) a tea composition comprising from about 2 

grams to about 10 grams of tea having a particle 

size of from about 0.40 mm to about 0.75 mm.

II. District Court Proceedings

Teashot accuses Green Mountain’s tea-brewing KCups of infringing the ’672 patent. The accused K-Cup 

has a foil lid, which would be punctured by a needle to 

inject water during use.

The district court construed the claim element “sealed 

body is constructed of a water-permeable material which 

allows flow of a fluid through said sealed body to produce 

a tea extract from said tea composition” as “the portions of 

the sealed body into which fluid flows and out of which 

fluid flows are water-permeable material allowing flow of 

a fluid through said sealed body to produce a tea extract 

from said tea composition.” Teashot LLC v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., No. 12-CV-189, 2012 WL 

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4 TEASHOT.LLC v. GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTER

5866443, at *3 (D. Colo. Nov. 19, 2012). The district court 

concluded that the K-Cups do not literally infringe because the K-Cups do not have a “water-permeable material” for water to flow into the sealed bodies. Teashot LLC 

v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., No. 12-CV-189, 

2014 WL 485876, at *4–5 (D. Colo. Feb. 6, 2014). The 

district court also found that Teashot “waived its right to 

raise the doctrine of equivalents by failing to timely 

disclose it as an infringement theory.” Id. at *6. The 

district court therefore entered summary judgment of 

non-infringement in favor of Green Mountain. Id. at *5, 

*8. 

Teashot appeals the claim construction and summary 

judgment of no literal infringement of the “said sealed 

body is constructed of a water-permeable material which 

allows flow of a fluid through said sealed body” element. 

Teashot also appeals the exclusion of its doctrine of 

equivalents theory. This court has jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION

I. Claim Construction

Claim construction is a question of law that we review 

de novo. Lighting Ballast Control LLC v. Philips Elecs. N. 

Am. Corp., 744 F.3d 1272, 1276–77 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (en 

banc). 

Teashot argues that the district court’s construction 

deviates from the claim text and improperly imports 

limitations from the specification by requiring fluid to 

flow into and out of the sealed body through waterpermeable material. Green Mountain counters that the 

phrase “which allows,” linking “water-permeable material” to the “flow of a fluid through said sealed body,” reCase: 14-1323 Document: 54-2 Page: 4 Filed: 01/05/2015
TEASHOT.LLC v. GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE ROASTER 5

quires that fluid flows through the “sealed body” via the 

“water-permeable material”. 

We agree with Green Mountain that the claim text 

identifies “water-permeable material” as the means 

through which fluid could flow through the “sealed body.” 

The specification confirms this conclusion. Every discussion in the specification of fluid flowing through the 

“sealed body” refers to the “water-permeable material.” 

See, e.g., ’672 patent col. 2 ll. 48–52, col. 5 ll. 42–45. The 

’672 patent mentions no other means through which fluid 

could flow through the “sealed body.”

Teashot contends, however, that Figure 4 in the ’672 

patent teaches an embodiment in which water enters a 

sealed body through an opening in a material that is not 

otherwise permeable to water. Teashot further contends 

that the district court’s claim construction improperly 

excludes this embodiment in Figure 4. 

Figure 4, however, is limited to disclosing an arrangement in which multiple tea containers can be accessed individually to add different tea compositions, but 

used together for brewing. See ’672 patent col. 7 l. 66-col. 

8 l. 13. Figure 4 and its descriptions do not show any 

details of entry or exit means in the containers for water 

to flow through. From this silence, we cannot assume 

Figure 4 to depart from the consistent teachings elsewhere in the ’672 patent that water can flow through a 

“sealed body” via a “water-permeable material.” We are 

therefore not persuaded by Teashot that the district court 

erred in construing this claim element.

II. Summary Judgment of Non-Infringement

We review a district court’s summary judgment determination de novo. Smothers v. Solvay Chems., Inc., 

740 F.3d 530, 538 (10th Cir. 2014).

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A. Literal Infringement

Literal infringement requires that “every limitation 

set forth in a claim must be found in an accused product, 

exactly.” Southwall Techs., Inc. v. Cardinal IG Co., 54 

F.3d 1570, 1575 (Fed. Cir. 1995).

Teashot does not dispute that its owner and the inventor of the ’672 patent, in testimonies quoted by Green 

Mountain, admitted that the lid of the K-Cup is not water 

permeable. Teashot also does not dispute the following 

admission that the mere puncturing of the K-Cup lid fails 

to transform the material into a water-permeable material:

Q Correct me if I’m wrong, when you puncture the 

foil lid, the actual foil remains water impermeable, correct?

A The -- the foil around the hole, yes.

Q Yes. The hole no longer has foil in it, correct?

A Correct.

Q Hence the hole.

A Right.

Q The water doesn’t flow through the foil; it flows 

through an open space. Correct?

A Correct.

Appellee Br. 31 (quoting J.A. A1203).

Nevertheless, Teashot contends that a factual dispute 

remains as to whether the K-Cup’s lid, once punctured, 

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becomes a “water-permeable material.” Teashot cites no 

support in the record that a skilled artisan would consider 

“water-permeable material” to encompass material not 

permeable to water but having merely a puncture hole. 

We do not find Teashot’s unsupported arguments—

especially against its admissions quoted by Green Mountain—create a genuine factual dispute sufficient to survive summary judgment. 

B. Exclusion of Doctrine of Equivalents Theory

We review a discovery sanction for abuse of discretion. 

Kaufman v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 601 F.3d 1088, 

1092 (10th Cir. 2010); O2 Micro Int’l Ltd. v. Monolithic 

Power Sys., Inc., 467 F.3d 1355, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2006).

Teashot argues that the district court erred in imposing a discovery sanction under Rule 37 because its infringement contentions were not disclosed in response to 

any interrogatory, subjecting Teashot to a duty to supplement its disclosure under Rule 26(e). Teashot argues 

that its infringement contentions were disclosed pursuant 

instead to the district court’s scheduling order. Teashot 

asserts that that the district court did not find a violation 

of the scheduling ordering and that Teashot fully complied with the scheduling order. 

We find Teashot’s arguments meritless. The district 

court specifically noted that its “Scheduling Order directed Plaintiff to serve ‘its infringement contentions, 

claim charts, and associated documents on Defendants’ no 

later than May 1, 2012.” Teashot, 2014 WL 485876, at *6 

(quoting the scheduling order). The district court then 

found that “[i]t is undisputed that Plaintiff did not include 

the doctrine of equivalents in its original infringement

contentions, served on May 1, 2012, and again failed to 

include this theory in its March 7, 2013 supplement.” Id. 

at *7. Teashot’s violation of the scheduling order is the 

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basis for the district court’s conclusion that “Plaintiff 

waived its right to raise the doctrine of equivalents by 

failing to timely disclose it as an infringement theory.” 

Id. at *6.

Teashot’s assertion on appeal that it “fully complied 

with the Scheduling Order” is not supported by any 

showing that it disclosed any doctrine of equivalents 

theory by the deadline in the scheduling order. See Reply 

Br. 17-18. Rather, Teashot’s assertion is based on its 

argument that “the Scheduling Order is utterly silent 

about any required contents of the infringement contentions, and contains no supplementation prohibition.” Id. 

But silence on the required contents of “infringement 

contentions” does not mean that Teashot can choose to 

disclose nothing about its doctrine of equivalents theory. 

Silence on supplementation prohibition also does not 

mean that Teashot can amend at will after the scheduling 

order deadline. Teashot’s focus on what the scheduling 

order is “silent” about glosses over Teashot’s disclosure 

duties under the guise of ignorance.

It was in the context of addressing Teashot’s claim of 

ignorance that the district court compared Teashot’s duty 

to disclose its infringement contentions under the scheduling order to a disclosure duty under Rule 26(e) in response to a contention interrogatory. See Teashot, 2014 

WL 485876, at *6 (“Plaintiff alleges that this did not 

constitute waiver because nothing in this Court’s Scheduling Order or Local Rules required it to disclose this theory 

any earlier in the litigation.”). The district court dismissed Teashot’s arguments because “Plaintiff’s attorneys 

are experienced patent litigators, who are reasonably 

expected to understand that infringement contentions—

whether responsive to a contention interrogatory, required by local patent rules, or included in a scheduling 

order—should specify what infringement theories the 

party is pursuing.” Id. at *7. 

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We find that Teashot’s complaints about the discovery 

sanction take the district court’s reasoning relating to 

Rule 26(e) out of context. Examining “the totality of the 

circumstances involved in the case,” we cannot say that 

the district court abused its discretion in imposing the 

discovery sanction on Teashot. See Olcott v. Del. Flood 

Co., 76 F.3d 1538, 1557 (10th Cir. 1996). Accordingly, we 

affirm the district court’s exclusion of Teashot’s doctrine

of equivalents theory and affirm the summary judgment 

of non-infringement in favor of Green Mountain.

AFFIRMED

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