NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential. 

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC, 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,

Plaintiffs-Appellants

v.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2021-1949

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Delaware in No. 1:20-cv-00706-CFC-JLH, Judge 

Colm F. Connolly.

______________________ 

Decided: July 18, 2022

______________________ 

STEVEN M. SEIGEL, Susman Godfrey LLP, Seattle, WA, 

argued for plaintiffs-appellants. Also represented by 

MATTHEW ROBERT BERRY, ANDRES HEALY. 

 MICHAEL S. CONNOR, Alston & Bird LLP, Charlotte, 

NC, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by 

KIRK T. BRADLEY; NATALIE CHRISTINE CLAYTON, ANDREW 

JAMES LIGOTTI, New York, NY.

______________________ 

Case: 21-1949 Document: 36 Page: 1 Filed: 07/18/2022
2 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

Before MOORE, Chief Judge, NEWMAN and HUGHES,

Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the court filed by Chief Judge MOORE

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge NEWMAN

MOORE, Chief Judge

Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, EBS) appeal an order of 

the United States District Court for the District of Delaware granting judgment of non-infringement of the asserted patents in favor of Ford Motor Co. (Ford). Because 

the district court’s judgment is based on erroneous claim 

construction, we vacate and remand. 

BACKGROUND

The asserted patents disclose a fuel management system for enhanced operation of a spark ignition gasoline engine.1 ’580 patent at Abstract. The fuel management 

system controls engine knocking by injecting an anti-knock 

agent, which is a fuel, directly into a combustion cylinder. 

Id.; see id. at 1:61–65. In one embodiment, the system includes (1) a direct-injection system for directly injecting a 

mixture of an anti-knock agent and fuel and (2) a port-injection system for port injecting part of the fuel, which is 

gasoline. Id. at 2:9–12, claim 1. Preferably, the anti-knock 

agent is ethanol. Id. at 2:8–11. Critical to this appeal, however, the asserted patents also state, “[i]n order to obtain 

the highest possible octane enhancement while still maintaining combustion stability, it may be useful for 100% of 

the fuel to come from ethanol with a portion being port injected, as an alternative to a small fraction of the port1 The asserted patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 

9,708,965; 10,619,580; and 10,781,760. We cite the ’580 patent as representative of the asserted patents.

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ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 3

fueled gasoline.” Id. at 3:34–38 (emphasis added). Claim 

1 recites in relevant part: 

A fuel management system for a spark ignition engine, comprising:

a first fueling system that uses direct injection; [and]

a second fueling system that uses port fuel 

injection . . . . 

EBS filed this action in the District of Delaware, alleging Ford infringes several claims of the asserted patents. 

During claim construction proceedings, EBS argued fuel

used in the direct-injection system does not need construction. Ford argued that the first fueling system requires “a 

fuel that contains an anti-knock agent . . . that is different 

from the fuel used for port injection/in the second fueling 

system.” J.A. 23–25, 44–46. 

The district court adopted Ford’s construction from the 

bench. J.A. 44–46. It reasoned “the specification . . . makes 

clear that what is invented is a dual fuel engine.” J.A. 44

at 21:16–17 (emphasis added). The district court relied on 

the asserted patents’ titles, which are an “[o]ptimized fuel 

management system for direct injection ethanol enhancement of gasoline engines,” ’580 patent at [54], their background sections, their figures, which the district court 

noted do not “depict the use of a single fuel engine,” J.A. 45 

at 22:7–10, and their “repeated[] refer[ences] to the invention as directly injecting ethanol or another second fuel 

that is not gasoline,” J.A. 45 at 22:11–16. Regarding the 

embodiment that uses 100% ethanol, the district court explained it is in the context of a dual-fuel engine and, thus, 

“is far different from teaching a single fuel engine.” J.A. 45 

at 24:2–25. 

In view of the district court’s construction, the parties 

stipulated to judgment of non-infringement of the asserted

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4 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

patents. EBS appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION

EBS contends that the district court erred in construing the first fueling system to be limited to using fuels different than the fuel in the second system because there is 

no clear disclaimer of a single-fuel invention. We agree. 

We review claim construction based solely upon the intrinsic record de novo. Intell. Ventures I LLC v. T-Mobile 

USA, Inc., 902 F.3d 1372, 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2018). Claim 

terms are generally given their ordinary and customary 

meaning, i.e., the meaning that the terms would have to a 

person of ordinary skill in the art when read in the context 

of the specification and prosecution history. Phillips v. 

AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312–13 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en 

banc). We depart from the ordinary and customary meaning in only two instances: lexicography and disavowal. GE 

Lighting Solutions, LLC v. AgiLight, Inc., 750 F.3d 1304, 

1309 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Only disavowal is relevant to this 

appeal. The standard for disavowal is exacting. Id. Disavowal requires that “the specification [or prosecution history] make[] clear that the invention does not include a 

particular feature.” Id. 

There is nothing in the claim language that requires 

the use of different fuels in the direct-injection system and 

the port-injection system. Ford does not argue otherwise. 

Respondent’s Br. 44 (“Although the claims themselves may 

be silent as to the specific ‘fuel that is to be injected . . . .’”); 

Oral Arg. 23:40–23:53.2 Ford, instead, argues that the 

specification and prosecution history compel such a result. 

2 Available at https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=21-1949_0407202

2.mp3. 

Case: 21-1949 Document: 36 Page: 4 Filed: 07/18/2022
ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 5

The asserted patents’ specifications do not impose a 

single-fuel requirement either. To the contrary, they disclose an embodiment in which “100% of the fuel . . . come[s] 

from ethanol with a small fraction being port injected.” 

’580 patent at 3:34–38. The district court’s construction requiring two different fuels would exclude this disclosed embodiment. Moreover, even if Ford and the district court 

were correct that the specification discloses only dual-fuel 

systems, “we have expressly rejected the contention that if 

a patent describes only a single embodiment, the claims of 

the patent must be construed as being limited to that embodiment.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1323. 

Ford argues that the specification disavows single-fuel 

systems because it describes “the invention” as requiring a 

direct-injection fuel different than a port-injection fuel. 

Appellee’s Br. 33 (citing ’580 patent at 1:31–34, 2:9–11, 

13:26–28, 16:26–28). None of the cited passages, however,

amount to a clear and unmistakable disavowal of singlefuel systems. For example, Ford cites the statement, relied 

on by the district court, that “[t]his invention relates to an 

optimized fuel management system for use with spark ignition gasoline engines in which an anti-knock agent which 

is a fuel is directly injected.” ’580 patent at 1:31–34. At 

best, this background statement merely contemplates using the invention with a gasoline engine to directly inject 

an anti-knock agent, which the parties agree is not gasoline

for purposes of this appeal. Critically, the statement does 

not require using gasoline in either fueling system or disavow systems that use other fuels. Such a requirement 

would be inconsistent with the 100% ethanol embodiment, 

id. at 3:34–38, and the specification’s disclosure that the 

“port injected fuel can be either gasoline or ethanol,” id. at 

7:27–28 (emphasis added). See Cont’l Cirs. LLC v. Intel 

Corp., 915 F.3d 788, 798 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (holding descriptions of the “present invention” were not limiting “where 

other portions of the intrinsic evidence do not support applying the limitation to the entire patent”). Because these 

Case: 21-1949 Document: 36 Page: 5 Filed: 07/18/2022
6 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

statements do not describe all embodiments, they do not 

describe the invention as a whole. See Regents of Univ. of 

Minnesota v. AGA Med. Corp., 717 F.3d 929, 936 (Fed. Cir. 

2013) (“When a patent thus describes the features of the 

‘present invention’ as a whole, this description limits the 

scope of the invention.” (quoting Verizon Servs. Corp. v. 

Vonage Holdings Corp., 503 F.3d 1295, 1308 (Fed. Cir.

2007))). We conclude that Ford has not established that 

the specification disavows single-fuel systems in the asserted patents. 

Ford also cites, as the district court did, the asserted 

patents’ titles. Appellee’s Br. 35; J.A. 44 at 21:17–21. “[I]f 

we do not read limitations into the claims from the specification that are not found in the claims themselves, then we 

certainly will not read limitations into the claims from the 

patent title.” Pitney Bowes, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 

182 F.3d 1298, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 1999). In any event, the titles’ reference to “ethanol enhancement of gasoline engines” is not a clear and unmistakable disavowal of singlefuel systems, particularly in view of the disclosed 100% ethanol embodiment. Accordingly, the patents’ titles do not 

support the district court’s imported claim requirement of

two different fuels. 

Our construction of the claims is not inconsistent with 

our decision in Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., 831 F. App’x 505 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (non-precedential) 

(EBS I). There, we summarily affirmed the district court’s 

claim construction requiring dual fuels for the EBS I patents, which derive from the parent application of the asserted patents.3 Id. at 505. Ford argues EBS I compels the 

same claim construction here. See Appellee’s Br. 52–57. 

The EBS I patents, however, are different from the patents-in-suit. For example, the EBS I patents, e.g., ’519 

3 The EBS I patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,069,839; 

9,255,519; 9,810,166; and 10,138,826. 

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ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 7

patent at 5:46–57 (describing direct injection of ethanol), 

do not disclose 100% ethanol being port injected and direct 

injected as an alternative to port-injected gasoline. When 

related patents have different specifications, and as in this 

case different disclosures which are directly relevant to the 

claim term at issue, different claim constructions can result. 

Likewise, statements made during the prosecution of a 

different EBS patent do not require importing a limitation 

into the district court’s construction in this case. See Appellee’s Br. 47–48 (citing U.S. Patent App. No. 11/758,157). 

That patent, like the EBS I patents, is different from the 

asserted patents. For example, its claims explicitly recite 

different fuel types in each fueling system. See J.A. 4015. 

There is no inconsistency between our holding today and 

the prosecution history of a different patent with different 

claim language. 

CONCLUSION

The district court erred in construing the claims to require a dual-fuel system. We therefore vacate the district 

court’s non-infringement judgment premised on that erroneous construction and remand for further proceedings. 

VACATED AND REMANDED

COSTS

Costs are awarded to EBS. 

Case: 21-1949 Document: 36 Page: 7 Filed: 07/18/2022
 

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC, 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,

Plaintiffs-Appellants

v.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2021-1949

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Delaware in No. 1:20-cv-00706-CFC-JLH, Judge 

Colm F. Connolly.

______________________ 

NEWMAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

I respectfully dissent. The panel majority departs from 

the rule that patent claims are construed in accordance 

with the invention described in the specification. Claims

cannot be construed to cover subject matter different from 

what the patentee described as the invention. “Ultimately, 

‘[t]he only meaning that matters in claim construction is 

the meaning in the context of the patent.’” Ruckus Wireless, Inc. v. Innovative Wireless Sols., LLC, 824 F.3d 999, 

1003 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Trs. of Columbia Univ. v. 

Symantec Corp., 811 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2016)); see 

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2 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

also Trs. of Columbia, 811 F.3d at 1363 (“claims must be 

read in view of the specification, of which they are a 

part” (quoting Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 

F.3d 967, 978 (1995) (en banc))). The district court so construed the claims. 

 The specification describes a system using both directly-injected fuel and port-injected fuel, where the directly-injected fuel includes an anti-knock agent such as 

ethanol, and the port-injected fuel is different from the directly-injected fuel. The panel majority errs in construing 

the claims to include a system in which the fuels are not 

different. The district court correctly rejected that construction.1 I respectfully dissent from my colleagues’ erroneous claim construction, and their incorrect departure 

from the law of claim construction. 

DISCUSSION 

Ethanol Boosting Systems and MIT (collectively

“EBS”) own United States Patents No. 9,708,965; 

10,619,580; and 10,781,760. The three patents are titled 

“Optimized Fuel Management System for Direct Injection 

Ethanol Enhancement of Gasoline Engines,” and the specifications are substantially the same. The patents describe 

and claim a fuel system having both direct injection and 

port injection systems, where the direct injection fuel contains both gasoline and an anti-knock agent such as ethanol, and is different from the fuel in the port-injection 

1 Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., 

No. 1:20-cv-00706-CFC-JLH, ECF 71 (D. Del. Mar. 25, 

2021) Reasoning for the district court’s claim construction 

is articulated in the transcript of the court’s March 16, 

2021 Markman hearing (“Claim Construction”), Appx39–

84. 

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ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 3

system. See, e.g., ’580 patent; Claim Construction at 21:18;

(Appx44). 

EBS sued Ford Motor Company for infringement, and 

the district court construed the term “fuel” in the claim

clause “directly injected/first fueling system,” as “a fuel 

that contains an anti-knock agent that is not gasoline and 

that is different from the fuel used for port injection in the 

second fueling system.” Claim Construction at 29:2–4; 

(Appx46). After the district court adopted this construction, the parties stipulated to non-infringement. 

My colleagues now hold that the claims should be construed to include systems where the same fuel is used for 

both direct injection and port injection. The panel majority’s claim construction departs from the specification and 

contradicts the prosecution history.

The district court observed that the specification “recognizes that the engine has an ethanol system and that 

when ethanol has been exhausted, the engine can operate 

in a lower performance gasoline-only mode, but it gives 

specific strategies for avoiding this lower performance 

mode . . . .” Claim Construction at 25:6–9; (Appx45). The 

district court referred to an example in the specification 

that used 100% ethanol in both the port- and direct-injection systems, stating: 

from this we can discern that taken in context, this 

first passage is merely discussing how this dual 

fuel engine can adjust the relative amounts of ethanol and gasoline used and contemplating the fact 

that under certain conditions, the use of ethanol 

may go up to 100 percent.

Claim Construction at 24:7–11; (Appx45). The district 

court was reciting how the dual-fuel engine operates; the 

court was not changing the claims to include 100 percent 

ethanol in both the direct injection and the port injection 

systems.

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4 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

The district court construed the claims in light of the 

specification and the prosecution history, to require that 

the direct injection system uses a mixture of gasoline and 

ethanol. Claim Construction at 24–29; (Appx45–46). The 

district court took into account the title of the patents, in 

construing the claims. Id. at 21:18–21; (Appx44). 

The title is a factor in the construction of claims. In 

Corning v. Burden, the Supreme Court determined that the 

case turned on the question: “Is the plaintiff’s patent for a 

process or a machine?” 56 U.S. 252, 267 (1853). The Court 

explained that since the title was for a machine, it would 

constitute error “to construe his claim as for the function, 

effect, or result of his machine.” Id. at 269. See In re Fong, 

288 F.2d 932, 936 (CCPA 1961) (reading the specification

“from its title to its end . . . .”). 

The panel majority holds that the claims are not limited by the title, citing Pitney Bowes, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 182 F.3d 1298 (Fed. Cir. 1999) for its statement 

that “if we do not read limitations into the claims from the 

specification that are not found in the claims themselves, 

then we certainly will not read limitations into the claims 

from the patent title.” Id. at 1312. This statement, whatever its applicability on the facts of Pitney Bowes, cannot 

change the law that claims are construed in light of the 

specification, and the specification starts with the title. 

A title is required by statute. 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(1) 

(“Every patent shall contain a short title of the invention . . .”). In Exxon Chem. Patents, Inc. v. Lubrizol Corp., 

64 F.3d 1553, 1557 (Fed. Cir. 1995), the court looked first 

to the title and specification “as [an] interpretive aid,” (citing Titanium Metals Corp. of Am. v. Banner, 778 F.2d 775, 

780 (Fed. Cir. 1985)). In UltimatePointer, L.L.C. v. Nintendo Co., 816 F.3d 816 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the court addressed a patent titled “Easily–Deployable Interactive 

Direct Pointing System,” and observed that the title

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ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 5

showed that the claimed invention was limited to a direct 

pointing system. Id at 823. The court stated:

The specification repeatedly emphasizes that the 

invention is directed to a direct-pointing system. 

The title of the invention explicitly states that the 

invention is an “Easily–Deployable Interactive Direct Pointing System . . .”. 

Id. (citing Exxon, 64 F.3d at 1557 (emphasis original)). In 

Ruckus Wireless, 824 F.3d at 1003, the court applied the 

title, “Communicating Information Packets Via Telephone 

Lines,” to construe the claims as excluding wireless communication. See also, e.g., Endo Pharms. Inc. v. Teva 

Pharms. USA, Inc., 919 F.3d 1347, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2019) 

(“Consistent with the claims, the abstract, patent title, and 

summary of the invention all describe the invention as a 

‘method of treating pain’ in patients with renal impairment.”); Bondyopadhyay v. United States, 748 F. App’x 301, 

306 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“The title of the patent and its specification further support the notion that the only phased array antenna structure claimed is in the shape of a geodesic 

sphere.”).

The panel majority errs in discarding the title and 

adopting a claim construction that departs from the description in the specification. The panel majority states 

that the specification discloses systems where the same 

fuel is used for both direct injection and port injection systems, requiring that the claims be construed to cover such 

systems. However, as Ford explains, the comparative data

are included in the specification for purpose of comparison, 

to demonstrate the advantages of the claimed dual fuel system. Ford states: 

Thus, far from describing a single-fuel embodiment 

where only ethanol is both direct injected and port 

injected, as EBS posits, Table 2 merely provides 

data for port injection of ethanol in order to compare those results to the results achieved by 

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6 ETHANOL BOOSTING SYSTEMS, LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY

directly injecting ethanol at different times (late 

versus early). [’580 patent], 5:44–6:41. In fact, Table 2 confirms the “negligible impact” of port injection of ethanol over the “[c]onventional gasoline 

engines” of the prior art. [’580 patent], 5:41–44, 

6:18–21 (1.05 bar for port injection of ethanol), 

6:31–37 (1 bar for “[c]onventional gasoline engines”). 

Ford Br. 14. As Ford observes, where a specification “repeated[ly] disparages” prior art devices, the skilled artisan 

would not “read the claims of the patents-in-suit to cover 

such devices. . . .” Openwave Sys. v. Apple Inc., 808 F.3d 

509, 517 (Fed. Cir. 2015)). 

The prosecution history conforms to the district court’s 

construction. In prosecuting a parent application with the 

same specification, EBS distinguished a reference on the 

ground that the reference used only a single fuel. 

Appx4022. “Beyond the notice function and reliance-based 

aspects of a patent’s prosecution history, it ‘provides evidence of how the [PTO] and the inventor understood the 

patent.’” Biogen Idec, Inc. v. GlaxoSmithKline LLC, 713 

F.3d 1090, 1095 (Fed. Cir. 2013). While the parties in Biogen focused on the question of disclaimer, the prosecution 

history here shows how the patentee viewed the dual fuel 

system as a distinction from the prior art. 

Construing the claims to include a single-fuel engine 

disregards both the specification and the prosecution history. The majority errs in applying a claim construction 

that is not supported by the record. The district court correctly construed the claims, whereas the panel majority’s 

claim construction contravenes the rules of claim construction. I respectfully dissent. 

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