Court Opinion

ID: 9495237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:57:48.641291+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:54.004838
License: Public Domain

MICHEL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s affirmance of the denial of JMOL ón equivalent infringement. In my view, we should hold that, under the All Elements Rule, use of the defendant’s structure cannot infringe by equivalents the method claims of U.S. Patent No. 4,669,918 (“the '918 patent”) because neither a judge nor a reasonable jury could conclude that the accused method used a device containing a “metal-to-metal bearing contact” or a “stabbing connection” between an angled “depending support leg” and a piling. I would thus overturn the jury’s verdict of infringement and enter judgment for the accused infringer.
Turning to the first of three disputed limitations — “metal to metal weight bearing contact”-the trial court’s undisputed and, I conclude, correct construction of this limitation is “a weight bearing contact between two metal surfaces.” Accordingly, the limitation requires that the (lower) end of one metal tube (the jacket support leg) be in direct contact with the (top) end of another (the piling). See, e.g., Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary 303 (1984) (defining “contact” as “[t]he touching of two objects or surfaces”). The patentee does not dispute that the defendant’s structure, unlike that used in the claimed invention, lacks such metal-to-metal contact. Shown below, the defendant’s structure has a piece of wood and a metal “porch” separating one metal tube from the other metal tube, i.e., the accused method’s metal jacket support leg and the metal piling never come into direct contact.1
*1315[[Image here]]
It stands to reason, then, that the claimed “metal-to-metal” contact is missing altogether from the defendant’s structure, meaning equivalent infringement as a matter of law simply cannot occur. See, e.g., Warner Jerkinson Co., Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., 520 U.S. 17, 29-30, 117 S.Ct. 1040, 137 L.Ed.2d 146 (1997) (“[T]he doctrine of equivalents must be applied to individual elements of the claim, not to the invention as a whole, [and] it is important to ensure that the application of the doctrine, even as to an individual element, is not allowed such broad play as to effectively eliminate that element in its entirety.”); Pennwalt Corp. v. Durand-Wayland, Inc., 833 F.2d 931, 934-35, 4 USPQ2d 1737, 1739 (Fed.Cir.1987) {en banc) (“Under the doctrine of equivalents, infringement may be found (but not necessarily) if an accused device performs substantially the same overall function or work, in substantially the same way, to obtain substantially the same overall result as the claimed invention. That formulation, however, does not mean one can ignore claim limitations.” (citations omitted)). The trial court should have granted JMOL on this basis alone.
A similar analysis applies to the angled “depending support legs” limitation. The trial court’s uncontested — and correct— construction defined this limitation as “the lower portion of a space frame jacket leg which is angled to permit a stabbing connection to be made with a piling for support of the platform system.” (Emphases added.) Separately, the trial court construed the limitation “stabbing connection” to mean “an end-to-end joining of two metal tubes by the insertion of an extension attached to the end of one of the tubes into the end of the other.” (Emphasis added.) The claim limitation “depending *1316support legs,” however, incorporates such a “stabbing connection” and thus was construed to require, in toto, “the lower portion of a space frame jacket leg which is angled to permit ‘an end-to-end joining of two metal tubes by the insertion of an extension attached to the end of one of the tubes into the end of the other." “ Of course, one of the tubes is a vertical piling for support of the platform system and the other is the now-vertical jacket leg at its lower extremity. Such a configuration is shown in the rendition of the structure of the patented method reproduced immediately below.
[[Image here]]
But this limitation’s angled depending support leg feature is missing from Shell’s device. Shell’s jacket leg does not rest on or touch the top of the piling and is not angled at its lower extremity to become vertical. As shown in the figure below, it does have an attached piece angled down and to the left that ends at the “leveling porch.” As is unmistakable from the evidence, Shell’s piling extends from the ocean floor upward and its top surface is then embedded in the wood timbers at the underside of the leveling porch. The jacket leg, however, is not angled to become vertical, and the leg and the vertical piling do not join at all, much less by the “insertion of an extension attached to the end of one of’ these tubes. Indeed, they cannot, because the lower leg portion is not angled such that it could be inserted inside the piling, or vice versa. Compare col. 9, 11. 28-35 of the '918 patent with the rendition of the structure disclosed by the patent reproduced above.
Again, therefore, the limitation’s angled depending jacket support leg stabbingly connected to the piling is also altogether missing from the structure used in the accused method. See, e.g., Warner-Jenkinson, 520 U.S. at 39 n. 8, 117 S.Ct. 1040 (“[I]f a theory of equivalents would entirely vitiate a particular claim element, partial or complete judgment should be rendered by the court....”); Pennwalt Corp., *1317833 F.2d at 935, 4 USPQ2d at 1739 (“[A] court may not, under the guise of applying the doctrine of equivalents, erase a plethora of meaningful structural and functional limitations of the claim on which the public is entitled to rely in avoiding infringement.” (citations omitted)).
In short, because all three disputed limitations recite structures that are utterly and unmistakably missing from the defendant’s structure, the patentee is legally barred from benefiting from the doctrine of equivalents. I would therefore reverse and enter judgment for Shell. See Weis-gram v. Marley Co., 528 U.S. 440, 455-56, 120 S.Ct. 1011, 145 L.Ed.2d 958 (2000) (holding that appellate court can enter judgment for party when it determines that substantial evidence did not support jury verdict). All other issues although decided correctly, I agree, by the majority, would thereby become moot.
The All Elements Rule is applied by courts as a legal matter. See, e.g., Bell Atlantic Network Servs., Inc. v. Covad Comm. Group, Inc., 262 F.3d 1258, 1267, 59 USPQ2d 1865, 1869-70 (Fed.Cir.2001) (stating that the All Elements Rule and prosecution history estoppel are legal limitations upon the doctrine of equivalents). And no amount of assertion by any trial witness can trump this rule to create a triable fact issue. Accordingly, no court need ask whether such evidence can be considered “substantial” because that standard of appellate review applies only to factual, not legal, issues. For this reason, the verdict cannot be sustained. Indeed, the issue of equivalent infringement of the three disputed limitations should never have been given to the jury in the first place. See id. at 1279-80, 262 F.3d 1258, 59 USPQ2d at 1879 (“Thus, if a court determines that a finding of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents would entirely vitiate a particular claim element, then the court should rule that there is no infringement under the doctrine of equivalents.” (citations omitted) (emphasis added)). The doctrine of equivalents was simply inapplicable to these limitations as a matter of law because a court must recognize that the features recited in these three limitations as correctly construed (without disagreement) were altogether missing from the defendant’s device.

. True, as the majority indicates, the "weight bearing" limitation is met, because the weight from the jacket leg is transferred to the piling via the porch and wood timbers. However, *1315the "metal to metal” requirement of the limitation must still be satisfied, and it is not.