Fed Circ weighs in on pipette mechanism claim construction

Precedential ruling finds errors in lower court’s findings in a case concerning medical devices | Earlier verdict has been vacated and remanded.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found that a federal court erred in a dispute over a claim construction between two medical device companies.

In delivering a precedential ruling yesterday, November 1, the court sided with Malvern Panalytical’s appeal against a decision that had favoured TA Instruments-Waters.

The first lawsuit emerged when Malvern sued Waters at the  US District Court for the District of Delaware allegedly infringing various claims of, among others, US patent numbers: 8,827,549 and 8,449,175.

These two patents both disclose microcalorimeters—machines that measure the amount of energy absorbed or released during a chemical reaction between two compounds, and specifically describe an isothermal titration calorimeter (ITC).

During claim-construction proceedings before the district court, Malvern argued that the term ‘pipette guiding mechanism’ should mean a ‘mechanism that guides the pipette assembly’, while Waters argued that it should mean a ‘mechanism that manually guides the pipette assembly’.

The district court dismissed Malvern’s arguments and agreed with Waters’ construction.

But the Federal Circuit found on Monday that the claim language and the specification indicate that the term is used broadly in the ‘549 and ‘175 patents and refers to a mechanism that guides the pipette assembly either manually or automatically.

“Starting with the claim language, we conclude that ‘pipette guiding mechanism’ has a plain and ordinary meaning—a mechanism that guides the pipette assembly. It is appropriate to construe this term by looking at the words ‘pipette’, ‘guiding’, and ‘mechanism’ individually,” it said.

The Federal Circuit further pointed out that the district court had concluded that the prosecution history of another Mavern patent, US number 9,103,782 was relevant to the claim construction of the ‘pipette guiding mechanism’.”

The US Patent and Trademark Office had rejected the ’782 patent as anticipated by another application because the examiner understood it to disclose an automated ITC system.

But the Federal Circuit found that the federal court had erred in this reliance because Malvern’s ‘782 patent was unrelated to the ‘549 or ‘175 patents.

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