Opinion ID: 1036600
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “Continuous Contact”

Text: The terms “continuous contact” and “substantially continuous contact” appear in claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8 of the ’679 Patent, claims 1, 2, 5, and 6 of the ’034 Patent, and claim 52 of the ’691 Patent. The parties agree that the two terms should be given an identical construction. See Markman Order at , n.8. The district court construed the terms to mean “full surface contact” in reference to the contact occurring between the elastomeric core layer and the folds of the microtextured skin. Id. at – 10. The parties’ dispute is directed to three Figures in the specification of the Krueger Patents, wherein each Figure shows a varied mode of physical contact between the microtextured skin and the elastomeric layers. Figures 22, 23, and 24 set forth three distinct spatial relationships between the skin and the core during stretching; the spatial relationships depicted in the three figures frame 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION 11 the parties’ competing understandings of the claim term’s scope. The ’679 Patent describes an embodiment with the core and skin remaining in “full contact,” whereby the core material fills the folds formed in the skin layers. ’679 Patent col. 13 ll. 10-12. Figure 22, representative of the full contact mode, shows such a stretched laminate: See id. col. 4 ll. 32-34. The parties agree that the full skin-to-core contact depicted in Figure 22 constitutes “continuous contact” as it is used in the claims. The strained skin-to-core contact shown in Figure 23 is less than full contact. The Figure shows a stretched laminate with the folds of the skin pulling away from the core in a mode described as “cohesive failure.”3 3 All references to the cohesive failure mode in Figure 23 are exclusive to the right-hand side of the Figure as circled herein. At oral argument Tredegar understood 3M’s position to also refer to the left-hand side of the Figure, but 3M conceded during briefing that the left- 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION 13 See ’679 Patent col. 4 ll. 38-40. The intrinsic teachings differentiate between “adhesive failure” and “continuous contact,” with Figure 24 illustrating decreased skin-tocore contact. ’679 Patent col. 6 ll. 46-49 (describing “adhesive failure of the skin to the core under the microtextured folds with intermittent skin/core contact at the fold valleys”). 3M argues that the cohesive failure mode, like the full contact in Figure 22, is “continuous” or “substantially continuous contact” because the skin and core layers remain joined without interruption despite cracks pervading the core. The identified cracks within the core can be seen at the center-right of Figure 23 where, beneath the point of contact with the skin, the stretching has caused the core to pull apart. Pointing to this image of cohesive failure, 3M contends that because the cracks are within the core—and not between the core and skin layers―the skin-to-core contact is still “continuous.” 3M argues that there is no exclusion in the intrinsic disclosures that would preclude the term from being given its full effect, an effect which includes the cohesive failure in Figure 23. Tredegar counters by arguing that the cohesive failure mode is not a subset of “continuous contact” because, during prosecution, the applicant twice amended the claims to distinguish between Figures 22 and 23 so as to 14 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION limit itself to the full contact depicted in Figure 22. Tredegar, however, does not point to anything in the written description that would compel such a conclusion. The district court adopted Tredegar’s proposed construction of “full surface contact” after examining amendments made by the applicant during the prosecution of the claim issuing as claim 1 in the ’679 Patent. In the Markman Order, the district court traced the original application, noting that it was amended on two separate occasions to distinguish the Hazelton prior art reference.4 As originally drafted, the ’679 Patent application had no limitation regarding the range of contact that could exist between the skin and core layers. See J.A. 1154. It was amended for a first time, adding the limitation “substantially continuous contact,” to claim the interface between the skin and core. In submitting the amendment, the applicant noted that “substantially continuous contact” was depicted in Figures 22 and 23. J.A. 1268. This first amendment, however, was rejected as obvious in light of Hazelton. Id. In response, the claim was amended a second time by deleting the word “substantially” so that the limitation required “continuous contact” between the core and skin layers. J.A. 1278–80. The applicant did not provide statements illuminating why “substantially” was removed. Tredegar argued, and the district court agreed, that by removing the word “substantially” from the first amended claim, the second amendment surrendered any skin-to-core contact that was not “full surface” contact. 4 Hazelton disclosed a low gloss film made up of an elastomeric core and two inelastic outer skin layers. J.A. 1513 col.1 ll.57–60; see also J.A. 1268 (“Hazelton et al [sic] employ substantially the same genuses of both core and covering materials as do applicants and the resultant films can be stretched to yield the same ‘microtexturing’ surface structure.”). 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION 15 Markman Order at –10. The district court found that the second amendment to the claim disavowed embodiments depicting cohesive failure— i.e., Figure 23. See id. at . The district court limited its interpretation of “full surface contact” to the embodiment illustrated in Figure 22. Id.
We begin our analysis with the language of the claims. The term “continuous contact,” as used in the Krueger Patents, does not suggest whether the patentee intended the term to include the cohesive failure mode shown in Figure 23. Thus, while it is unclear whether the skin folds pulling away from the core qualify as remaining in “continuous contact,” there is no basis to suppose that the claim term applies only to the full contact mode shown in Figure 22. Indeed, claim 1 of the ’679 Patent merely states that the “elastomeric layer and [the] skin layer are in continuous contact.” ’679 Patent col. 29 ll. 1- 2. In the absence of exclusionary language, the term’s ordinary meaning—read to give full effect to the claim language—captures situations in which the elastomeric layer undergoes cohesive failure because “continuous contact” requires nothing more than uninterrupted contact between the laminate’s skin and core layers. Regardless of whether the core has internal cracks, the applicant, in claiming his invention, did not suggest he sought to exclude cohesive contact. We therefore agree with 3M that the plain and ordinary meaning of the claim term supports a broad claim scope. See TI Grp. Auto. Sys. (North Am.), Inc. v. VDO North Am., L.L.C., 375 F.3d 1126, 1138 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (explaining that absent other limiting circumstances, a patentee is entitled to the full breadth of claim scope supported by the words of the claims and the written description).
The written description and corresponding illustrations confirm that “continuous contact” includes the 16 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION cohesive failure mode of contact. The written description provides a concise recitation of two variations of “continuous contact” that align with the modes of contact depicted in Figures 22 and 23. See ’034 Patent col. 13 ll. 9-16. The disclosure first describes a situation in which “the core and skin remain in full contact,” id. at col. 13 ll. 4-6, and then characterizes instances of cohesive failure as “a variation” of this “continuous contact construction.” Id. at col. 13 ll. 8-11. The specification then distinguishes between cohesive failure and intermittent contact—as shown in Figure 24—emphasizing that the two modes of contact are distinct. By explaining that instances of cohesive failure are “a variation” of full contact and then distinguishing those variations from the intermittent contact or adhesive failure, the written description includes both full and cohesive contact within the meaning of “continuous contact.” See ’034 Patent col. 13 ll. 13-16 (describing the intermittent contact shown in Figure 24 as “an entirely different skin/core adhesion mode” from the “variations” of “continuous contact”). Tredegar suggests that this reading of “continuous contact” is unsupported, but offers no competing written description reference that affirmatively requires narrowing the construction to include only Figure 22. The district court similarly failed to explain how the Krueger Patent disclosure requires excluding cohesive failure from the construction of “continuous contact.” Tredegar relies heavily on amendments made during prosecution to assert that, in narrowing claim 1 of the ’679 Patent from “substantially continuous contact” to “continuous contact,” the applicant simultaneously limited itself to the skin-to-core contact of Figure 22. We have fully considered the narrowing amendments in the prosecution history, including the applicant’s stated reasons as to why the claims are patentable over Hazelton, and find Tredegar’s arguments unpersuasive. Ultimately, Tredegar fails to demonstrate how the amendments are tied to the cohesive failure characterized 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION 17 in the issued patents as a “variation” of “continuous contact.” Indeed, cohesive failure—or a description thereof—is not mentioned in the applicant remarks surrounding either amendment. The district court found that the amendments constituted a disclaimer, but our precedent requires that, in order for prosecution disclaimer to attach, the disavowal must be both clear and unmistakable. Lazare Kaplan Int’l., Inc. v. Photoscribe Tech., Inc., 628 F.3d 1359, 1370 (Fed. Cir. 2010); Omega Eng’g, Inc. v. Raytek Corp., 334 F.3d 1314, 1325–26 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Our cases also warn that, because the prosecution history represents an ongoing negotiation between the PTO and the inventor, “it often lacks the clarity of the specification and thus is less useful for claim construction purposes.” Netcraft Corp. v. eBay, Inc., 549 F.3d 1394, 1401 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (quoting Philips, 415 F.3d at 1317). We do not find a clear and unmistakable disclaimer of the cohesive contact depicted in Figure 23 in the prosecution history. It is apparent from the prosecution history that the applicant distinguished Hazelton, but there is no statement that amounts to a disavowal of cohesive failure. To the contrary, 3M presents a competing interpretation that the applicant eliminated the word “substantially” to more clearly recite that “continuous contact” was different from Hazelton because Hazelton disclosed only intermittent contact.5 Such a reading of the prosecution history is consistent with the Krueger Patents’ written description. The patents refer to the full contact and cohesive failure modes of contact as variations of “continuous contact,” while explaining that the adhesive failure causing intermittent contact between the skin and core was something different. The December 13, 1994 remarks to the PTO 5 Hazelton does not disclose continuous skin-to-core contact. See J.A. 1511–13. Hazelton instead discloses the kind of intermittent contact shown in Figure 24 of the Krueger Patents. 18 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES v. TREDEGAR CORPORATION can be similarly read to clarify that the elimination of “substantially” was, at least in part, an effort to draw a line between the claimed “continuous contact” and the intermittent contact in Hazelton. J.A. 1280–81. Given this reasonable, contrary reading of the prosecution history, we cannot say with certainty that the ’679 Patent was intended to limit “continuous contact” to the type of full skin-to-core contact depicted in Figure 22. Where an applicant’s statements are amenable to multiple reasonable interpretations, they cannot be deemed clear and unmistakable. See Grober v. Mako Prods., Inc., 686 F.3d 1335, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (rejecting prosecution disclaimer arguments because the applicant’s ambiguous statements distinguishing from prior art did not focus on specific prior art features); see also Abbott Labs., 566 F.3d at 1289. The district court erred when it concluded otherwise.