Court Opinion

ID: 9495779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:10:13.945484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:11.786860
License: Public Domain

RADER, Circuit Judge,
concurring-in-part.
I agree with my colleagues in the outcome of this decision, although I reach that outcome with slightly different reasoning on the issue of infringement of the '567 patent under the doctrine of equivalents.
In 1985, Berlex added a new Summary of the Invention section to its original patent application as a continuation-in-part, which ultimately issued as the '843 patent. *1143Berlex later filed a divisional application of this continuation-in-part, a continuation of which issued as the '567 patent. At issue are the 80 new claims Berlex added to this continuation patent application in a 1992 preliminary amendment, and an additional 39 new claims added during prosecution in 1994. The examiner made clear throughout the pendency of the '567 patent application that these newly added claims were not patentably distinct from the claims that issued in the '843 patent.
This court reasons that arguments made in the prosecution of the '843 patent “do not automatically apply to different claims in a separate application.” Opinion at 12. In the abstract, I agree. Here, however, the record indicates that the '567 claims are not patentably distinct from the previously issued '843 claims. These two patents, according to record evidence, claim the same subject matter. Members of the public reading the file histories of these two patents would not discern a difference between these '567 claims and the parent '843 claims, nor do I.
To extend the '567 patent claims to ensnare multiple unlinked constructs under the doctrine of equivalents, the fact finder must disregard the patentee’s comments made to distinguish the single linked construct of the patentably indistinguishable '843 patent claims from the prior art. Berlex, having surrendered multiple constructs in the '843 patent prosecution, cannot recapture such constructs by filing patentably indistinguishable claims in a related patent. Because the claims of the '567 and '843 patents are patentably indistinguishable, the prosecution history of the parent application may well apply to its progeny.
For this reason, I write to suggest that estoppel distinguishing the '843 claims from the Axel reference may well affect the equivalence calculus for the '567 claims. After all, both patents claim the same subject matter. Moreover, a broad reading of the '567 patent claims would run afoul of the prohibition against introduction of new matter in amended claims. The claims at issue were added between ten and twelve years after the filing date of the 1982 priority application. The district court correctly determined that the specification does not support an interpretation of these new claims that encompasses multiple constructs. In the final analysis, the '843 and '567 patents simply cannot concurrently recite “patentably indistinguishable” claims of substantively different scope. Therefore, on remand for assessment of the Supreme Court’s Festo factors, I would have the district court fully consider arguments made by the pat-entee in the prosecution of the '843 patent to determine the issue of infringement by equivalents.