Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01979/USCOURTS-ca13-15-01979-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Feit Electric Company, Inc.
Appellee
GE Lighting Solutions, LLC
Appellant
Lighting Science Group Corporation
Appellee
Lights of America, Inc.
Appellee
MSI, LLC
Appellee
Technical Consumer Products, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC., LIGHTING SCIENCE 

GROUP CORPORATION, FEIT ELECTRIC 

COMPANY, INC., MSI, LLC, TECHNICAL 

CONSUMER PRODUCTS, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees

______________________ 

2015-1979, 2015-1980, 2015-1981, 2015-1982, 2015-2044

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Ohio in Nos. 1:12-cv-03131-DAP, 

1:12-cv-03132-DAP, 1:12-cv-03134-DAP, 1:12-cv-03136-

DAP, 5:12-cv-03127-JRA, Judge Dan Aaron Polster, Judge 

John R. Adams.

______________________ 

Decided: October 27, 2016

______________________ 

RICHARD L. RAINEY, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by ROBERT JASON FOWLER, RANGANATH 

SUDARSHAN.

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 1 Filed: 10/27/2016
2 GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 

GARRET A. LEACH, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Chicago, IL,

argued for all defendants-appellees. Appellee Lighting 

Science Group Corporation also represented by KOURTNEY 

BALTZER, ERIC DAVID HAYES.

GARY W. SMITH, Posternak Blankstein & Lund LP, 

Boston, MA, for defendant-appellee Lights of America, 

Inc. 

RYAN DYKAL, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP, Kansas 

City, MO, for defendant-appellee Feit Electric Company, 

Inc. Also represented by MARK SCHAFER.

JOSEPH W. BAIN, Shutts & Bowen LLP, West Palm 

Beach, FL, for defendant-appellee MSI, LLC. Also represented by DANET RODRIGUEZ FIGG. 

STACIE RACHEL HARTMAN, Schiff Hardin LLP, Chicago, IL, for defendant-appellee Technical Consumer Products, Inc. Also represented by HENRY BEHNEN, New York, 

NY. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, WALLACH and HUGHES,

Circuit Judges.

HUGHES, Circuit Judge. 

GE Lighting Solutions sued Defendants for infringing

U.S. Patent Nos. 6,787,999 and 6,799,864—two patents 

directed to dissipating heat from light emitting diode 

lamps. The district court correctly found the asserted ’864 

patent claims indefinite, but erroneously determined that

the asserted ’999 patent claims are indefinite. Accordingly, we affirm-in-part, reverse-in-part, and remand for 

further proceedings. 

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 2 Filed: 10/27/2016
GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 3

I 

This appeal results from the consolidation of several 

cases arising from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Ohio. One of those cases, GE Lighting Solutions, LLC v. Technical Consumer Products, Inc., 

Case No. 5:12-cv-3127 (N.D. Ohio) (GE Lighting I) was 

assigned to Judge Adams, while the other cases (collectively, GE Lighting II)1 proceeded before Judge Polster. 

After the GE Lighting I court construed certain disputed claims, the GE Lighting II defendants moved for 

summary judgment on the grounds that the terms “elongated” and “to heat sink” render the asserted claims 

indefinite. The GE Lighting II court agreed and thus held 

that the asserted claims are indefinite. Because the GE 

Lighting II indefiniteness findings were entitled to preclusive effect, the GE Lighting I court entered judgment 

against GE. GE appeals both final judgments here. 

II 

“We review a district court’s ultimate determination 

that a claim is invalid as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112 

¶ 2 de novo, although, as with claim construction, any 

factual findings by the district court based on extrinsic 

evidence are reviewed for clear error.” UltimatePointer, 

L.L.C. v. Nintendo Co., 816 F.3d 816, 826 (Fed. Cir. 2016) 

(footnote omitted).2 Under Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., claims are indefinite when “read in light 

of the specification delineating the patent, and the prose-

 

1 Unless otherwise mentioned, all references here 

are to GE Lighting II. 2 The patents-in-suit were filed before the adoption 

of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, Pub. L. No. 112–

29, § 3, 125 Stat. 284, 285–93 (2011), and so the prior 

version of § 112 governs. See Fleming v. Escort, Inc., 774 

F.3d 1371, 1374 n.1 (Fed. Cir. 2014). 

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 3 Filed: 10/27/2016
4 GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 

cution history,” they “fail to inform, with reasonable 

certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the 

invention.” 134 S. Ct. 2120, 2124 (2014). “Even if a claim 

term’s definition can be reduced to words, the claim is still 

indefinite if a person of ordinary skill in the art cannot 

translate the definition into meaningfully precise claim 

scope.” Halliburton Energy Servs., Inc. v. M-I LLC, 514 

F.3d 1244, 1251 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

A 

GE asserted claims 1, 4–8, 10, 12, and 14–16 of the 

’864 patent against Defendants. The asserted claims all 

require a thermally conductive core, which draws heat 

from the LEDs and dissipates it into the air. Each asserted claim also requires (directly or by dependence) that the 

thermally conductive core be “elongated.” J.A. 28. The 

district court construed “elongated” to mean “extending in 

length.” J.A. 11, 14–15. The court then found the asserted claims indefinite because a person of ordinary skill in 

the art could not be reasonably certain of the claim scope 

in light of the term “elongated.” J.A. 22–23. We agree. 

“Elongated” is undoubtedly a term of degree. Although “terms of degree are [not] inherently indefinite,” 

the patent must provide “some standard for measuring 

that degree” such that the claim language “provide[s] 

enough certainty to one of skill in the art when read in 

the context of the invention.” Biosig Instruments, Inc. v. 

Nautilus, Inc., 783 F.3d 1374, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2015), cert. 

denied, 136 S. Ct. 569 (internal quotations and citations 

omitted); see also Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 766 

F.3d 1364, 1370–71 (Fed. Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 136 

S. Ct. 59 (2015). And so for the asserted claims to be 

definite, the patent must provide that additional information in the form of “objective boundaries.” Interval 

Licensing, 766 F.3d at 1371.

The ’864 patent fails to do so. As GE’s expert admitted, an ordinarily skilled artisan cannot, without addiCase: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 4 Filed: 10/27/2016
GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 5

tional information, differentiate an “elongated” core from 

a “non-elongated” core. J.A. 2060–62. “Elongated” appears nowhere in the specification, nor, as GE admits, are 

the core’s dimensions otherwise described in text or 

drawings. See J.A. 5588. And in the prosecution history, 

GE distinguished two prior art references disclosing heat 

sinks, Reisenauer and Serizawa, as not containing an 

“elongated” element. See J.A. 5894 (“There is nothing in 

Serizawa’s plate shaped heat sink 153 that could be 

described as ‘elongated.’”); id. (“Reisenaur [sic] discloses a

disk or plate shaped heat sink which cannot be considered 

to be elongated”); J.A. 5896 (“Applicants find no aspect of 

element 28 [of the Reisenauer prior art reference] which 

could conceivably be called ‘elongated.’”). But the disk of 

Reisenauer and the plate in Serizawa both extend in 

length, which creates an unresolved ambiguity as to how

the prior art elements are not considered to be “elongated.” A person of ordinary skill thus has no objective 

means to determine which cores are “elongated” and 

which are not. 

Although “a patentee need not define his invention 

with mathematical precision,” Invitrogen Corp. v. Biocrest 

Mfg., L.P., 424 F.3d 1374, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (internal 

quotations and citations omitted), at best, a skilled artisan would know from the prosecution history only that 

the elongated cores cannot be “disk or plate shaped” or

“generally planar.” J.A. 5896. Those general descriptions 

hardly provide the necessary “objective boundaries” about 

the length or shape of an “elongated” core. See Interval 

Licensing, 766 F.3d at 1371. Accordingly, we affirm the 

finding of indefiniteness for the asserted claims of the ’864 

patent.

B 

GE also asserted claims 8, 9, and 12 of the ’999 patent, which covers certain LED lamps. The asserted 

claims cover an LED lamp that contains a heat sink with 

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 5 Filed: 10/27/2016
6 GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 

an LED module on one side and an electronic module on 

the other side. See ’999 patent col. 10 ll. 7–20. The heat 

sink draws heat from both components, which are “in 

thermal communication” with the heat sink. Id. The heat 

sink then dissipates heat into the air. Id. col. 4 ll. 45–50, 

col. 8 ll. 55–59. The court construed the noun “heat sink” 

to carry its plain and ordinary meaning and adopted GE’s 

proposed construction of “to heat sink” as “to receive and 

dissipate heat from.” The district court then found that 

the phrase “to heat sink” renders the asserted claims 

indefinite. GE argues that the phrase “to heat sink” does 

not render the asserted claims of the ’999 patent indefinite. We agree. 

As the district court recognized, “[t]he claims, specification and prosecution history demonstrate[] that any 

amount of heat transfer is sufficient for ‘heat sink (verb).’” 

J.A. 25–26 (emphasis added). And that is true even if a

lamp’s design seeks to minimize heat transfer. J.A. 27 

(“[A]s [heat sinking] is used in the ’999 Patent, an object 

that is shielded from receiving heat is still ‘heat sinking.’”). Thus, whether a component heat sinks another 

component is an objectively defined fact: either heat is 

transferred between the components and heat sink, or it 

is not. Because “to heat sink” creates no “zone of uncertainty,” see Nautilus, 134 S. Ct. at 2129, we conclude that 

the asserted claims of the ’999 patent are not indefinite.3

 

3 Because the asserted claims are not indefinite 

based on the clear intrinsic evidence, we need not consider 

any extrinsic evidence. See Profectus Tech. LLC v. 

Huawei Techs. Co., 823 F.3d 1375, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2016)

(“Extrinsic evidence may not be used to contradict claim 

meaning that is unambiguous in light of the intrinsic 

evidence.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 6 Filed: 10/27/2016
GE LIGHTING SOLUTIONS, LLC v. LIGHTS OF AMERICA, INC. 7

III

Accordingly, we affirm-in-part, reverse-in-part, and 

remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

AFFIRMED-IN-PART, REVERSED-IN-PART, AND 

REMANDED

No costs. 

Case: 15-1979 Document: 89-2 Page: 7 Filed: 10/27/2016