Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01605/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01605-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
American Power Conversion Corporation
Appellant
Server Technology, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

SERVER TECHNOLOGY, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellee

v.

AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION 

CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellant

______________________ 

2015-1605

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

District of Nevada in No. 3:06-cv-00698-LRH-VPC, Judge 

Larry R. Hicks.

______________________ 

Decided: September 23, 2016

______________________ 

JAMES E. HARTLEY, Holland & Hart LLP, Denver, CO, 

argued for plaintiff-appellee. Also represented by 

MICHAEL P. MANNING, Billings, MT; DONALD A. DEGNAN, 

Boulder, CO. 

PAUL MARCH SMITH, Jenner & Block LLP, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellant. Also represented by ADAM G. UNIKOWSKY; REGINALD J. HILL, MICHAEL 

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2 SERVER TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION

GLENN BABBITT, PETER H. HANNA, TERRENCE J. TRUAX, 

Chicago, IL.

______________________ 

Before DYK, PLAGER, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

REYNA, Circuit Judge. 

The trial court adopted a jury’s advisory verdict that 

Server Technology Inc.’s (“STI”) patents were not invalid 

as obvious and upheld the jury’s verdict that those patents were infringed by American Power Conversion 

Corporation (“APC”). APC appeals the district court’s

denial of its motions for judgment as a matter of law

(“JMOL”) on those issues. We reverse the trial court’s 

decisions because they were based on an erroneous claim 

construction.

BACKGROUND

A. Patented Technology

APC and STI are competitors in the market for intelligent power distribution units (“PDUs”)—informally 

known as plugstrips: 

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SERVER TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION 3

U.S. Patent No. 7,702,771 at Fig. 1. 

PDUs are used to regulate power flowing to computer 

servers in data centers. In data centers, computer servers 

are stacked in racks. Data centers may contain thousands of racks, and each rack has a PDU to power the 

servers it holds. Data centers benefit from maximizing 

the number of servers in each rack. However, if the 

servers in a rack draw too much power, the PDU will 

overload and fail. 

The patents at issue relate to PDUs that digitally display the amount of power being drawn. Only two claims 

are at issue: claim 15 of U.S. Patent No. 7,043,543 (the 

“’543 patent”) and claim 15 of U.S. Patent No. 7,702,771 

(the “’771 patent”). There are only two pertinent differences between claim 15 of the ’543 patent and claim 15 of 

the ’711 patent. Compare ’543 patent col. 12 ll. 21−50

with ’771 patent col. 12 ll. 19−46. First, claim 15 of the 

’543 patent describes an “electrical power distribution 

plugstrip,” while claim 15 of the ’771 patent describes an

“electrical power distribution device.” Second, Element A 

of claim 15 of the ’543 patent includes the limitation of a 

“vertical strip enclosure,” while Element A of claim 15 of 

the ’771 patent includes the broader limitation of “an 

enclosure.” Claim 15 of the ’543 patent reads as follows: 

15. An electrical power distribution plugstrip connectable to one or more electrical loads in a vertical electrical equipment rack, the electrical power 

distribution plugstrip comprising in combination:

A. a vertical strip enclosure having a thickness, 

and a length longer than a width of the enclosure;

B. a power input penetrating said vertical strip 

enclosure; 

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4 SERVER TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION

C. a plurality of power outputs disposed along an 

area on a face of said length of the strip enclosure, 

each among the plurality of power outputs being 

connectable to a corresponding one of said one or 

more electrical loads;

D. a plurality of power control relays disposed in 

said vertical strip enclosure, each among said plurality of power control relays being connected to 

said power input and to one or more corresponding power outputs among said plurality of power 

outputs;

E. a digital current information display disposed 

on another area of said vertical strip enclosure 

and adjacent to said plurality of outputs in current-determining communication with at least one 

among said power input and said plurality of 

power outputs; and

F. a plugstrip current reporting system (i) associated with the vertical strip enclosure (ii) in power information determining communication with 

at least one among said power input and said plurality of power outputs, and (iii) communicatingly 

connectable with a distal current reporting system 

through a communications network external to 

the electrical power distribution plugstrip.

’543 patent col. 12 ll. 21−50. 

Conventional PDUs used light-emitting diodes 

(“LEDs”) to alert users to the risk of overload, but they

did not tell users how much more power a rack could 

handle. STI’s patented PDU uses a digital display to 

provide a numerical value for the amount of power flowing through the PDU. STI’s claimed invention allows 

users to maximize the number of servers in each rack 

without risking overload by displaying the amount of 

power flowing through a PDU. 

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B. Procedural History

STI sued APC, claiming that two APC PDUs infringe 

claims 15 of the ’543 and ’771 patents. APC denied the 

infringement allegations and filed a motion for summary 

judgment on grounds that the asserted claims are invalid 

as obvious. APC argued that a person of ordinary skill in 

the art would have combined a prior art PDU with identified prior art digital displays that numerically reveal how 

much power is flowing through a plugstrip. 

The district court construed the word “plugstrip” in 

claim 15 of the ’543 patent to include a one-piece limitation; the claimed invention was limited to a single, fullyintegrated device. The trial court denied APC’s motion for 

summary judgment with respect to obviousness. The trial 

court held that the prior art did not disclose a single, 

integrated device; in particular, that the LED display 

associated with the prior art PDU was attached externally to the plugstrip, not integrated into it. The trial court 

reasoned that the evidence, viewed most favorably to STI, 

revealed no motivation to combine and that STI’s evidence of secondary considerations supported a finding of 

non-obviousness. 

A trial was held on the parties’ infringement and invalidity claims. Although the trial court’s summary 

judgment decision finding a one-piece limitation only 

applied to the ’543 patent, the record reveals that the 

limitation was applied to both patents at trial. The 

parties presented expert and demonstrative evidence 

showing that the one-piece limitation applied to both 

patents, and during trial the judge stated that both 

patents had a one-piece limitation. See J.A 25023 at Tr. 

95:9−13, 25142 at Tr. 569:10−14, 25147 at Tr. 589:18−24.

The jury returned a verdict finding that APC infringed the ’543 patent and the ’771 patent. The jury also 

issued an advisory verdict pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 

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vincing evidence that either of the claims at issue would 

have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art 

at the time of the invention. The advisory verdict included explicit findings by the jury concerning secondary 

indicia of nonobviousness. Consistent with the jury’s 

findings in its advisory verdict, the trial court held that 

claims 15 of ’543 and ’771 patents were not invalid as 

obvious. 

The district court denied APC’s motion for JMOL and 

alternative motion for a new trial. APC appeals. We 

have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(C). 

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review a district court’s order granting or denying 

JMOL under the standard applied by the regional circuit, 

which in this case is the Ninth Circuit. Lincoln Nat’l Life 

Ins. Co. v. Transamerica Life Ins. Co., 609 F.3d 1364, 

1367 (Fed. Cir. 2010). In the Ninth Circuit, JMOL review 

is de novo, and the appellate court views evidence in the 

light most favorable to a jury verdict. Amarel v. Connell, 

102 F.3d 1494, 1521 (9th Cir. 1996). When a district 

court’s claim construction relies only on intrinsic evidence, as it did here, we review that claim construction de 

novo. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 

831, 841 (2015). 

DISCUSSION

APC argues that the district court erred in construing 

claim 15 of the ’543 patent to contain a one-piece limitation. We agree. 

Claim terms are given their ordinary and customary 

meaning, which is the meaning they would have to a 

person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312–13 

(Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc). That meaning may be determined from the claims themselves, the specification, the 

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SERVER TECHNOLOGY, INC. v. AMERICAN POWER CONVERSION 7

prosecution history, dictionaries, and any other relevant 

evidence. Id. at 1312−18. 

Element A of claim 15 of the ’543 patent indicates 

that the claimed plugstrip comprises a vertical strip 

enclosure, and some of the elements must clearly be 

physically connected to that enclosure. For example, the 

power outputs in Element C must be “disposed along” a 

length of the enclosure, the power control relays in Element D must be “disposed in” the enclosure, and the 

digital current information display in Element E must be 

“disposed on” the enclosure. ’543 patent col. 12 ll. 21−50. 

By contrast, Element F, the current reporting system, 

must only be “associated with” the enclosure. Id. This 

does not require that the current reporting system be 

lodged on or within the one-piece enclosure, because 

“associated with” merely requires commonality, not 

physical connection. See Apple Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., 757 

F.3d 1286, 1306 (Fed. Cir. 2014). 

The district court incorrectly interpreted the term 

“comprising” in claim 15 of the ’543 patent to require that 

all six elements must be contained inside a single enclosure. We have recognized that “comprising” is a term of 

art that means “including but not limited to.” CIAS, Inc. 

v. Alliance Gaming Corp., 504 F.3d 1356, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 

2007). The use of the word “comprising” only means that 

the plugstrip must have at least all six of the claimed 

elements, but not that all six elements must be contained 

in a single enclosure. Moreover, dependent claim 17 

discloses a two-piece embodiment of the plugstrip in claim 

15, which further militates against construing the plugstrip in claim 15 to have an inherent one-piece limitation. 

See ’543 patent col. 12 ll. 47−61. Finally, the fact that the 

specification discloses a one-piece embodiment does not 

limit the plain language of claims that are broader than 

that disclosed embodiment. Electro Med. Sys., S.A. v. 

Cooper Life Sci., Inc., 34 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1994). 

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Given evidence in the record revealing that the onepiece limitation was effectively applied to both patents at 

trial, the jury’s advisory findings were based on an erroneous construction. The one-piece limitation was material to the scope of applicable prior art, motivation to 

combine, and the nexus between secondary indicia of 

obviousness and the claimed inventions. 

We therefore decline to uphold the jury verdict of infringement given the flawed claim construction. 

CONCLUSION

We reverse the trial court’s claim construction and 

remand for further proceedings consistent with this 

opinion its rulings on validity and infringement. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED 

COSTS

No costs.

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