Haemonetics Corp. sued Baxter Healthcare Corp. and Fenwal, Inc. for infringement of Patent No. 6,705,983 directed to a compact blood centrifuge device. Following trial Judge Gorton ruled on JMOL that asserted claim 16 was not indefinite, denied JMOL relief that claim 16 was anticipated or obvious, and entered damages and an injunction. Fenwal appealed. The Federal Circuit's decision (here) reversed Judge Gorton’s claim construction and therefore remanded on the remaining issues of indefiniteness / invalidity, which depended from the claim construction.
The issue was whether a term in claim 16 should have been construed consistently with the language of claim 16’s preamble, which would have rendered it almost nonsensical and would have excluded all disclosed embodiments, or whether the term should have been given a construction that was consistent with the other claims and embodiments but one that rendered language in claim 16's preamble superfluous. The district court said the latter, the Federal Circuit said the former.
The Federal Circuit held that since the claim’s language was perfectly clear it should be given a construction consistent with that language, even if that language may have been included in error and the construction may render the claim invalid.
Judge Gorton can hardly be blamed for picking what seemed to be the lesser of two evils on claim construction. But the Federal Circuit weighed in clearly (in a 3-0 decision by Judges Lourie, Gajarsa, and Moore) on the side of holding the patentee to the language in the claim: “it is what the patentee claimed and what the public is entitled to rely on.” (Slip op. at 11.)
Haemonetics Corp. v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 2009-1557 (Fed. Cir. June 2, 2010)