Opinion ID: 774257
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Orientation of the Projections

Text: 30 The '686 patent requires outwardly convex projections. The '050, '023, '752, and '022 patents require outwardly directed projections. The district court granted summary judgment for TCI because it found that TCI's products do not contain these elements. Order at 8. 31 The district court correctly held that the '686 patent requires that the projections of the insert means have a width or diameter defined by a radius, meaning that [they] must be convex. Id. at 5. 32 With respect to the '050 and '023 patents, the district court held that TCI did not infringe because its products have a space between the recesses which consists of a line segment. They do not have outwardly directed projections with a transverse cross-sectional configuration of a certain length. Id. at 8 (internal quotations omitted). Similarly, with respect to the '752 and '822 patents, the district court held that TCI did not infringe because its products have spaces between the recesses which are line segments, not outwardly directed projections having a transverse cross-sectional configuration of a certain length. Id. (internal quotations omitted). In an attempt to address these portions of the district court's decision, the parties engage in extensive, and rather arcane, debate about the shape of the projections required by the patent claims. As the parties argue their positions, they hotly contest such details as the meaning of transition points and radius end points, 4 the definition of which is said to require that the length of the projections be measured in a particular way, whether or not the length of the projections and recesses must be measured with reference to a radius or a parameter equivalent to a radius, and what such an equivalent parameter might be. While the details of this debate may be interesting to the parties, we find the debate difficult to follow and irrelevant to settling the dispute before us. Indeed, at oral argument, counsel for the parties agreed that the issue of how to measure the length of the projections is not involved in this appeal. We believe the issue on appeal is what constitutes an outwardly directed projection and that this question should be addressed directly, rather than obliquely by referring to various measurement techniques for determining a length of the projections. At oral argument, counsel for TCI urged that the limitation outwardly directed projections implies that the peaks of the projections extend above the recesses and that the recesses should have been defined as extending above the lowest point of the depressions. We do not agree. 33 The claim language states that the surface of the insert means is defined by a plurality of outwardly directed projections with recesses there between. '752 patent, col. 10, lines 31-33. Thus, the existence of outwardly directed projections necessarily requires the existence of recesses - the voids between the projections - and vice versa. Recesses and outwardly directed projections are complements of each other, and one cannot exist without the other. There is no requirement that these projections extend for any particular distance above the recesses. Outwardly directed is used to modify projections to distinguish the projections on the insert means from the inwardly directed projections on the surface of the inner hose, see '822 patent, claim 1, col. 10, lines 16-43, but does not have a special meaning or require that the projections have a particular shape. It simply clarifies that the insert means projections point towards the outside of the hose construction, so that they may engage with the recesses of the inner hose, while the projections of the inner hose point toward the inside of the hose construction, so that they may engage with the recesses of the insert means. In other words, outwardly directed projections means simply that bumps exist on the outer surface. 34 In each of the three claim constructions discussed above, the district court erroneously read a limitation into the claim language. Our cases make clear, however, that adding limitations to claims not required by the claim terms themselves, or unambiguously required by the specification or prosecution history, is impermissible. See Laitram Corp. v. NEC Corp., 163 F.3d 1342, 1347, 49 USPQ2d 1199, 1203 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (a court may not import limitations from the written description into the claims); SRI Int'l v. Matsushita Elec. Corp., 775 F.2d 1107, 1121, 227 USPQ 577, 585 (Fed Cir. 1985) (en banc). The more difficult question relates to the construction of the plurality of . . . projections limitation. 35