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Parties Involved:
Coleman Company, Inc.
Appellant
Sport Dimension, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

SPORT DIMENSION, INC., A CALIFORNIA 

CORPORATION,

Plaintiff-Appellee

v.

THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC., A DELAWARE 

CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellant

______________________ 

2015-1553

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Central District of California in No. 2:14-cv-00438-BROMRW, Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell.

______________________ 

Decided: April 19, 2016

______________________ 

 YURI MIKULKA, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, Costa 

Mesa, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellee. Also represented 

by MICHAEL I. ROTHWELL, Los Angeles, CA.

 MICHAEL R. ANNIS, Husch Blackwell LLP, St. Louis, 

MO, argued for defendant-appellant. Also represented by 

JOANN TRACY SANDIFER. 

______________________ 

Before MOORE, HUGHES, and STOLL, Circuit Judges.

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2 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

STOLL, Circuit Judge. 

Coleman Company, Inc. appeals from a stipulated 

judgment of noninfringement entered by the United 

States District Court for the Central District of California. 

Coleman challenges the district court’s claim construction 

on which the stipulated judgment was based and its

exclusion of Coleman’s expert. For the reasons stated 

below, we vacate the judgment, affirm the court’s exclusion of Coleman’s expert, and remand for proceedings 

consistent with this opinion. 

BACKGROUND

Coleman is an outdoor sporting equipment company 

that sells an array of products, including personal flotation devices. Coleman owns United States Design Patent 

No. D623,714 (“D’714 patent”). It claims “[t]he ornamental design for a personal flotation device,” as shown in 

Figures 1 and 2 below.

D’714 patent Figs. 1, 2. The D’714 patent generally 

discloses a personal flotation device with two arm bands 

connected to a torso piece. The torso piece is flat on its 

back and tapers toward a connecting strap on its sides. 

Sport Dimension is a sports equipment and apparel 

company that sells water-sports-related equipment, 

including its Body Glove® line of personal flotation devices. Sport Dimension’s Body Glove® Model 325 is the 

accused device and is shown below. 

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SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 3

Supplemental Appendix 1474–75. Sport Dimension’s 

accused personal flotation devices, like Coleman’s design, 

have two armbands connected to a torso piece. But, 

unlike Coleman’s design, the torso section in the Body 

Glove® device extends upwards to form a vest that goes 

over a person’s shoulders. 

Sport Dimension filed a declaratory judgment action 

in the Central District of California requesting judgment 

that it did not infringe the D’714 patent and that the 

patent is invalid. The district court issued two rulings 

that we now review. 

First, the court excluded the testimony of Coleman’s 

expert, Peter Bressler. Sport Dimension had argued that 

Mr. Bressler was not qualified to testify on the functionality of the D’714 patent’s design, and the court agreed. It 

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4 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

explained that, while Mr. Bressler “appears to possess 

substantial experience in the field of industrial design,” 

Coleman “does not dispute—and Mr. Bressler’s deposition 

testimony makes it quite clear—that Mr. Bressler has no 

substantive experience in the narrower field of personal 

flotation device design.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 12 (emphasis in original). Because the court viewed Mr. Bressler’s experience as insufficient to opine on the contested 

issues as an expert, it excluded his testimony. 

Second, the district court adopted Sport Dimension’s 

proposed claim construction, as follows: 

The ornamental design for a personal flotation 

device, as shown and described in Figures 1–8, except the left and right armband, and the side torso 

tapering, which are functional and not ornamental.

J.A. 3. Notably, this construction eliminates several 

features of Coleman’s claimed design, specifically the 

armbands and the side torso tapering. The court “found 

that the armbands, the armband attachments, the shape 

of the armbands, the tapering of the armbands, and the 

tapering of the side torso were all elements that serve a 

functional rather than ornamental purpose in the D’714 

patent.” J.A. 3. In light of the court’s claim construction 

order, Coleman moved for entry of judgment of noninfringement in favor of Sport Dimension so that it could 

appeal the claim construction. The court entered judgment, and Coleman timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). 

DISCUSSION

A.

We review the district court’s ultimate claim construction of a design patent de novo. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 

Inc. v. Covidien, Inc., 796 F.3d 1312, 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2015)

(citing Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 

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831, 841 (2015)). We review any factual findings underlying the construction for clear error. Id. 

Words cannot easily describe ornamental designs. See 

Dobson v. Dornan, 118 U.S. 10, 14 (1886) (explaining that 

a claim “is better represented by the photographic illustration than it could be by any description, and a description would probably not be intelligible without the 

illustration”). A design patent’s claim is thus often better 

represented by illustrations than a written claim construction. Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc., 543 F.3d 

665, 679 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc). Also, detailed verbal 

claim constructions increase “the risk of placing undue 

emphasis on particular features of the design and the risk 

that a finder of fact will focus on each individual described 

feature in the verbal description rather than on the 

design as a whole.” Id. at 680. 

Even so, a district court may use claim construction to 

help guide the fact finder through issues that bear on 

claim scope. Id. We have often blessed claim constructions, for example, where the court helped the fact finder 

“distinguish[] between those features of the claimed 

design that are ornamental and those that are purely 

functional.” Id. (citing OddzOn Prods., Inc. v. Just Toys, 

Inc., 122 F.3d 1396, 1405 (Fed. Cir. 1997)). Of course, a 

design patent cannot claim a purely functional design—a 

design patent is invalid if its overall appearance is “dictated by” its function. Id. at 668. But as long as the 

design is not primarily functional, “the design claim is not

invalid, even if certain elements have functional purposes.” Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 796 F.3d at 1333 (citing 

Richardson v. Stanley Works, Inc., 597 F.3d 1288, 1293–

94 (Fed. Cir. 2010)). That is because a design patent’s 

claim protects an article of manufacture, which “necessarily serves a utilitarian purpose.” L.A. Gear, Inc. v. 

Thom McAn Shoe Co., 988 F.2d 1117, 1123 (Fed. Cir. 

1993). So a design may contain both functional and 

ornamental elements, even though the scope of a design 

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6 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

patent claim “must be limited to the ornamental aspects 

of the design.” Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 796 F.3d at 1333. 

“Where a design contains both functional and nonfunctional elements, the scope of the claim must be construed in order to identify the non-functional aspects of 

the design as shown in the patent.” OddzOn Prods., 122 

F.3d at 1405. 

In OddzOn, for example, we considered a design patent on a rocket-shaped football and endorsed the district 

court’s construction that distinguished between functional 

and ornamental aspects of the design. The design patent 

disclosed a football with a large tail fin that added stability for the ball in flight. Id. at 1406. The fins also produced an “overall ‘rocket-like’ appearance of the design.” 

Id. at 1405. We agreed with the district court’s finding 

that the fins were functional. Nevertheless, we approved 

of the court’s construction that took the fins into account. 

We praised the court for “carefully not[ing] the ornamental features that produced the overall ‘rocket-like’ appearance . . . [and] properly limit[ing] the scope of the patent 

to its overall ornamental visual impression, rather than to 

the broader general design concept of a rocket-like tossing 

ball.” Id. 

We followed a similar line of analysis in Richardson. 

597 F.3d at 1293–94. The case concerned a multi-function 

tool described in the patent as “compris[ing] several 

elements that are driven purely by utility,” including a 

hammer, crowbar, and stud climbing tool. Id. at 1294. 

Those elements—i.e., the hammer’s flat head, the crowbar’s elongated shape, and the stud climbing tool’s jawlike shape—were well known in the art, and their basic 

design was dictated by their respective functional purposes. Id. But there were nevertheless ornamental aspects 

of the design of those elements. The district court had

explained that the claim “protect[ed] the ornamental 

aspects of Richardson’s design, which include, among 

other things, the standard shape of the hammer-head, the 

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diamond-shaped flare of the crow-bar and the top of the 

jaw, the rounded neck, the orientation of the crowbar 

relative to the head of the tool, and the plain, undecorated 

handle.” Richardson v. Stanley Works, Inc., 610 F. Supp. 

2d 1046, 1050 (D. Ariz. 2009), aff’d, 597 F.3d 1288. Our

court agreed with the district court’s approach that limited the claim to these ornamental aspects of the otherwise functional elements. Richardson, 597 F.3d at 1293–

94. Under this construction, the claim in Richardson did 

not protect the functional aspects of the design. Rather, 

the court’s construction properly ensured that the claim 

provided protection, albeit narrow, over those aspects of 

the tool that were ornamental.

In Ethicon Endo-Surgery, we construed a design patent on a surgical instrument. We explained that the 

open trigger, torque knob, and activation button of the 

instrument were functional. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., 

796 F.3d at 1334. And we construed the claim to eliminate the functional aspects of the design but to permit 

coverage of the ornamental aspects of the design. In

rejecting the district court’s claim construction, we disagreed with its conclusion that the claim had no scope. Id. 

While we agreed that certain elements of the device were 

functional, their functionality did not preclude those 

elements from having protectable ornamentation. We 

explained that, “although the Design Patents do not 

protect the general design concept of an open trigger, 

torque knob, and activation button in a particular configuration, they nevertheless have some scope—the particular ornamental designs of those underlying elements.” Id. 

In OddzOn, Richardson, and Ethicon, we construed 

design patent claims so as to assist a finder of fact in 

distinguishing between functional and ornamental features. But in no case did we entirely eliminate a structural element from the claimed ornamental design, even 

though that element also served a functional purpose. 

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8 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

The district court’s construction in this case conflicts 

with that principle of design patent claim construction 

because it eliminates whole aspects of the claimed design. 

In its construction, the district court improperly excluded 

the left and right armband and the torso side tapering: 

The ornamental design for a personal flotation 

device, as shown and described in Figures 1–8, except the left and right armband, and the side torso 

tapering, which are functional and not ornamental.

J.A. 3 (emphasis added). The court explained that the 

armbands and tapered torso “serve a functional rather 

than ornamental purpose,” and thus excluded them from 

the claim scope. Id. 

Coleman disputes the court’s ultimate construction 

and its finding that the armbands and tapered torso are 

functional. While we agree with Coleman that the court’s 

ultimate construction was improper under our law, we 

disagree with Coleman’s assertion that the armbands and 

side torso tapering do not serve a functional purpose. As 

the district court correctly pointed out, Coleman’s armbands and tapered side torso designs meet several of the 

factors we announced in PHG Technologies, LLC v. 

St. John Cos., for determining whether a design claim 

was dictated by function, including: 

whether the protected design represents the best 

design; whether alternative designs would adversely affect the utility of the specified article; 

whether there are any concomitant utility patents; whether the advertising touts particular 

features of the design as having specific utility; 

and whether there are any elements in the design 

or an overall appearance clearly not dictated by 

function.

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469 F.3d 1361, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (quoting Berry 

Sterling Corp. v. Pescor Plastics, Inc., 122 F.3d 1452, 1455 

(Fed. Cir. 1997)). Although we introduced these factors to 

assist courts in determining whether a claimed design 

was dictated by function and thus invalid, they may serve 

as a useful guide for claim construction functionality as 

well. 

Applied here, the PHG factors indicate that the design 

patent’s armbands and side torso tapering serve a functional purpose. For example, the district court examined 

alternative personal flotation device designs and concluded that Coleman’s armband and torso tapering represented the best available design for a personal flotation 

device. The court found that Coleman filed a co-pending 

utility patent disclosing the design patent’s armbands and 

torso tapering and touting the utility of those features. 

And it found Coleman to have promoted the particular 

utility of the armbands and tapered torso in its advertisements. We do not disagree with these findings. Nor 

do we disagree with the district court’s conclusion that the 

armbands and tapered side torso serve a functional purpose. 

Nonetheless, even though we agree that certain elements of Coleman’s design serve a useful purpose, we 

reject the district court’s ultimate claim construction. The 

district court eliminated the armbands and side torso 

tapering from the claim entirely, so its construction runs 

contrary to our law. Here, as in Ethicon, “the district 

court’s construction of the Design Patents to have no 

scope whatsoever fails to account for the particular ornamentation of the claimed design and departs from our 

established legal framework for interpreting design 

patent claims.” Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 796 F.3d at 1334. 

Moreover, design patents protect the overall ornamentation of a design, not an aggregation of separable elements.

Richardson, 597 F.3d at 1295 (noting that “discounting of 

functional elements must not convert the overall inCase: 15-1553 Document: 64-2 Page: 9 Filed: 04/19/2016
10 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

fringement test to an element-by-element comparison”). 

By eliminating structural elements from the claim, the

district court improperly converted the claim scope of the 

design patent from one that covers the overall ornamentation to one that covers individual elements. Here, the 

district court erred by completely removing the armbands 

and side torso tapering from its construction. 

We thus look to the overall design of Coleman’s personal flotation device disclosed in the D’714 patent to 

determine the proper claim construction. The design 

includes the appearance of three interconnected rectangles, as seen in Figure 2. It is minimalist, with little 

ornamentation. And the design includes the shape of the 

armbands and side torso tapering, to the extent that they 

contribute to the overall ornamentation of the design. As 

we discussed above, however, the armbands and side 

torso tapering serve a functional purpose, so the fact 

finder should not focus on the particular designs of these 

elements when determining infringement, but rather 

focus on what these elements contribute to the design’s 

overall ornamentation. Because of the design’s many 

functional elements and its minimal ornamentation, the 

overall claim scope of the claim is accordingly narrow. See Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 796 F.3d at 1334 (endorsing a “limited” claim scope for a design with functional 

elements).

We therefore reject the district court’s claim construction, vacate the stipulated judgment of noninfringement, 

and remand for consideration of infringement and, if 

necessary, validity consistent with the proper claim 

construction. In turn, nothing in this opinion should 

foreclose any pre-trial resolution of the infringement issue 

that is otherwise substantively and procedurally appropriate. Cf. id. at 1337 (affirming district court’s grant of 

summary judgment of noninfringement of design patent). 

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B. 

Coleman also challenges the district court’s exclusion 

of its expert, Peter Bressler. We review a district court’s 

exclusion of expert testimony under the law of the regional circuit, here the Ninth Circuit. Proveris Sci. Corp. v. 

Innovasystems, Inc., 536 F.3d 1256, 1267 (Fed. Cir. 2008). 

The Ninth Circuit reviews a district court’s exclusion of 

an expert for an abuse of discretion. Cabrera v. Cordis 

Corp., 134 F.3d 1418, 1420 (9th Cir. 1998). 

District court judges perform a gatekeeping role for 

expert testimony. They must ensure that expert testimony is reliable and that the testimony “relate[s] to scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge, which does 

not include unsubstantiated speculation and subjective 

beliefs.” Diviero v. Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co., 114 F.3d 

851, 853 (9th Cir. 1997) (citing Daubert v. Merrell Dow 

Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 590 (1993)); see also 

Fed. R. Evid. 702. 

The district court here excluded Mr. Bressler, an industrial design consultant with four decades of industry 

experience, because he had “no experience whatsoever in 

the field of [personal flotation devices].” J.A. 27. The 

record supports the district court’s conclusion. Mr. Bressler, when asked to evaluate Sport Dimension’s expert’s 

testimony on one aspect of the device’s function, stated: 

“I’m not an expert on personal flotation devices.” Appellee’s Br. 45. His proposal for alternative armband designs, by Mr. Bressler’s admission, was based on his 

“imagination.” Id. at 45–46. And he further admitted 

that he had no work experience with wearable buoyancy 

devices before serving as an expert. Id. at 45–47. In light 

of Mr. Bressler’s admitted inexperience and unfamiliarity 

with the very subject on which Coleman sought to rely on 

his testimony, the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding his testimony. See Cabrera, 134 F.3d at 

1420. 

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12 SPORT DIMENSION, INC. v. THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC. 

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, we reject the court’s 

claim construction, vacate its judgment of noninfringement, affirm its exclusion of Coleman’s expert, 

and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

AFFIRMED-IN-PART, VACATED-IN-PART, AND 

REMANDED

COSTS

No costs.

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