NOTE: Pursuant to Fed. Cir. R. 47.6, this disposition 

is not citable as precedent. It is a public record.

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

05-1471,-1529 

PODS, INC., 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

PORTA STOR, INC., and CHRISTOPHER E. NEUGUTH, 

 

 Defendants-Appellants. 

___________________________ 

 DECIDED: April 6, 2006 

___________________________ 

Before MAYER, LOURIE, and BRYSON, Circuit Judges. 

PER CURIAM. 

 Defendants Porta Stor, Inc., and Christopher E. Neuguth (collectively “Porta 

Stor”) appeal from two orders of the United States District Court for the Middle District of 

Florida. In the first, the court denied Porta Stor’s motion to compel discovery. In the 

second, the court denied Porta Stor’s motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction. 

Because Porta Stor’s discovery appeal is interlocutory and not properly before us, we 

dismiss appeal No. 05-1529 for lack of jurisdiction. Because we conclude that the 

district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Porta Stor’s motion to dissolve 

the preliminary injunction, we affirm in appeal No. 05-1471. 
05-1471,-1529 2 

BACKGROUND 

 PODS, Inc., is the assignee of U.S. Patent No. 6,071,062 (“the ’062 patent”), 

which is directed to an apparatus and method for lifting, handling, and transporting 

portable storage containers. In September 2004, PODS brought suit against Porta Stor, 

alleging infringement of the ’062 patent. At that time, PODS filed a motion for a 

preliminary injunction. Following a hearing, the magistrate judge who was assigned to 

the case recommended that a preliminary injunction be granted, based on a finding that 

PODS was likely to prevail on its claim of infringement of independent claims 1 and 29. 

On November 10, 2004, the district court adopted the magistrate judge’s report and 

recommendation and issued a preliminary injunction against Porta Stor. 

On December 3, 2004, Porta Stor filed a “motion for lifting,” i.e., dissolving, the 

preliminary injunction. When the parties subsequently agreed to engage in arbitration 

proceedings, that motion was denied without prejudice. On May 11, 2005, after the 

arbitration proceedings had ended, Porta Stor moved again to dissolve the preliminary 

injunction, arguing that the court had improperly relied on the opinion of PODS’s 

engineering expert and that the prosecution history of the ’062 patent did not support 

application of the doctrine of equivalents as to two of the limitations of claim 1. The 

magistrate judge denied the motion. With respect to the new information that Porta Stor 

offered in its motion, the magistrate judge explained that with due diligence Porta Stor 

could have presented that information prior to the issuance of the preliminary injunction. 

Moreover, the magistrate judge observed that Porta Stor’s arguments in its motion to 

dissolve the injunction failed to address claim 29. Because the original report and 

recommendation was based on a finding that PODS would likely prove infringement of 
05-1471,-1529 3 

claims 1 and 29, the magistrate judge concluded that Porta Stor’s “factual and legal 

arguments have little relevance.” Porta Stor appeals that decision. 

On June 22, 2005, Porta Stor filed a motion to compel discovery, seeking “a 

month by month list of the number of PODS employees, starting with September 2003,” 

as well as “a copy of all of the Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return, Form 941 for 

each quarter . . . for a period of the last 5 years.” Finding that “the requested discovery 

is not relevant to a claim or defense of any party,” the magistrate judge denied Porta 

Stor’s motion. Porta Stor appeals that decision as well. The two appeals have been 

consolidated. 

DISCUSSION 

 1. At the outset, we note that “as a general proposition most orders granting or 

denying discovery are not final orders within the meaning of section 1291 and therefore 

are not immediately appealable.” Rouse Constr. Int’l, Inc. v. Rouse Constr. Corp., 680 

F.2d 743, 745 (11th Cir. 1982).1 Here, final judgment has not been rendered and the 

magistrate judge’s denial of Porta Stor’s motion to compel discovery is therefore 

interlocutory. We thus conclude that Porta Stor’s appeal of the denial of its motion to 

compel discovery is not properly before us. Consequently, we dismiss appeal No. 05-

1529 for lack of jurisdiction. 

 2. Porta Stor has failed to show that the magistrate judge was wrong in holding 

that the new information submitted in connection with Porta Stor’s motion to dissolve the 

 

1

 Because the issues relating to the discovery appeal do not have special 

application in patent cases, we apply the law of the regional circuit to those issues, 

which in this case is the Eleventh Circuit. See Panduit Corp. v. All States Plastic Mfg. 

Co., 744 F.2d 1564, 1575 (Fed. Cir. 1984). 
05-1471,-1529 4 

preliminary injunction could have been presented at the original hearing on the 

injunction. For that reason, the magistrate judge properly denied the motion to dissolve 

the injunction.2

 In addition, as the magistrate judge pointed out, the district court 

entered the preliminary injunction on the basis of the magistrate judge’s conclusion that 

PODS had demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of success in showing that Porta 

Stor’s device infringed claims 1 and 29 of the ’062 patent. Because Porta Stor’s motion 

to dissolve the preliminary injunction was expressly limited to claim 1, and because we 

have held that in cases involving multiple patent claims a patentee seeking a preliminary 

injunction need only demonstrate that it will likely prove infringement of one of those 

claims, Amazon.com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble.com, Inc., 239 F.3d 1343, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 

2001), the magistrate judge was correct in holding that Porta Stor’s motion did not 

present sufficient grounds for dissolving the preliminary injunction. We therefore affirm 

in appeal No. 05-1471. 

 

2

 PODS argues that this court does not have jurisdiction to hear Porta Stor’s 

appeal from the denial of the motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction. To be sure, 

a party may not make repeated motions to dissolve an injunction and appeal from the 

denial of each such motion when the motions to dissolve are in substance merely 

repetitive requests to reconsider the initial injunction providing no new grounds for 

dissolving the injunction. However, Porta Stor’s motion to dissolve presented new 

grounds for dissolving the injunction (albeit grounds that the magistrate judge ruled 

should have been presented at the time of the preliminary injunction hearing). 

Moreover, Porta Stor did not make redundant motions to dissolve the injunction, but 

merely reasserted, after the arbitration proceeding had ended, the request it had 

previously made to dissolve the injunction (a request that the district court had 

dismissed without prejudice pending the arbitration proceeding). Accordingly, we do not 

construe the motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction as an untimely request for 

reconsideration of the order issuing the injunction or as a duplicative request for relief 

from the injunction. We therefore have jurisdiction over the denial of the motion to 

dissolve the injunction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1295(a)(1) and 1292(a)(1).