Jrb Company, Inc. v. Pemberton, Inc., No. 5:99-CV-1236.

91 F.Supp.2d 1112

JRB COMPANY, INC., Plaintiff, v. PEMBERTON, INC., Defendant.

No. 5:99-CV-1236.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

March 6, 2000.

Laura J. Gentilcore, Ray L. Weber, Renner, Kenner, Greive, Bobak, Taylor & Weber, Akron, OH, for JRB Company Inc., plaintiff.

Mark J. Skakun, III, Louis F. Wagner, Walter A. Lucas, Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs, Akron, OH, Robert W. Duckworth, Holland & Knight, Orlando, FL, for Pemberton Inc., defendant.

George W. Rooney, Jr., Roetzel & Andress, Cleveland, OH, for George W. Rooney, Jr., neutral.

ORDER

GWIN, District Judge.

On February 7, 2000, Defendant Pemberton, Inc., filed a motion for summary judgment in this patent infringement action [Doc. 36]. With its motion, Pemberton says Plaintiff JRB Company's United States Patent No. 4,708,579 ("the '579 patent") was invalid for lack of novelty and was not infringed. Alternatively, Defendant Pemberton says Plaintiff JRB Company cannot recover damages arising before the filing of this action due to laches. For the reasons that follow, the Court grants Pemberton's motion for summary judgment.

I. Background

Here, Plaintiff JRB Company claims that Defendant Pemberton infringes the '579 patent. The '579 patent, assigned to Plaintiff JRB Company, claims rights to a quick coupler for front end loaders. The quick coupler has two components: a male master connected by pins to the arms of a front end loader and a hook and eye combination female coupler.

Plaintiff JRB manufactures and sells both male coupler portions and female coupler portions for use with front end loader implements. Defendant Pemberton manufactures and sells only female coupler portions for use with front end loader implements. Both JRB and Pemberton compete for the sale of implements that attach to male couplers by hook and eye female coupler portions.

Plaintiff JRB Company here claims that Defendant Pemberton infringes claims 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the '579 patent. Claims 1 and 4 of the '579 patent are independent claims. Claims 2, 3, and 5 of the '579 patent are dependent claims.

Claim 1 of the '579 patent discloses:

A coupler for a front end loader having upper and lower arms comprising:

a male master portion adapted for receipt by the arms of the front end loader; and

a female coupler portion adapted for receipt by an implement for use with the front end loader;

wherein said male master portion comprises:

a contoured face plate;

a pair of channel plates affixed to the back of said face plate, said channel plates having first and second pairs of aligned holes passing therethrough for receiving and maintaining the upper and lower arms of the front end loader by pinned connection, said channel plates further including a bridged pin extending thereacross at top ends thereof, said face plate having a slot therein in alignment with a channel formed between said channel plates; wherein said female coupler portion comprises:

a plate having a hook at an upper portion thereof for receipt by said bridged pin, and an eye protruding from a bottom portion thereof adapted to pass through said slot; and

a support face extending from said plate of said female coupler portion between said hook and said eye adapted for making contacting engagement with said contoured face plate when said bridged pin is received by said hook and said extendable pin is received by said eye.

Dependent claims 2 and 3 discloses slight modification on this claim.¹

Independent claim 4 describes a quick coupler with male and female segments:

A coupler for a front end loader having upper and lower arms, comprising:

a male master portion having a contoured face plate with a slot therein, said slot being between two vertical parallel plates forming a channel therebetween, said plates having a bridges [sic] pin extending across a top portion thereof, and an extendable pin selectively operable to extend across said channel in juxtaposition to said slot;

a female coupler portion comprising a plate having a hook at an upper section thereof adapted for receipt by said bridged pin, and a protruding eye at a lower section thereof adapted for receipt with said slot in engagement with said extendable pin; and

wherein said plate of said female coupler portion further includes a support surface protruding from said plate between said hook and said eye for supporting contacting engagement with said contoured face of said male master portion.

Dependent claim 5 discloses a slight modification on this claim.²

The Court now considers the legal standard applied to Defendant Pemberton's motion.

II. Standard of Review

Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c) states the procedure for granting summary judgment and says in pertinent part:

[t]he judgment sought shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.

In considering a motion for summary judgment, the court must view the facts and all inferences to be drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 158-59, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970); 60 Ivy Street Corp. v. Alexander, 822 F.2d 1432, 1435 (6th Cir.1987); SEC v. Blavin, 760 F.2d 706, 710 (6th Cir.1985). The moving party has the burden of showing conclusively that no genuine issue of material fact exists. See 60 Ivy Street Corp., 822 F.2d at 1435.

Essentially factual disputes about matters essential to adjudication preclude the Court from granting summary judgment. See id. But not every factual dispute between the parties will prevent summary judgment. The disputed facts must be material. They must be facts that, under the substantive law governing the issue, might affect the outcome of the suit. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

The factual dispute must also be genuine. The facts must be such that if they proved them at trial a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party. See id. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505. The disputed issue does not have to be resolved conclusively in favor of the nonmoving party, but that party is required to present some significant probative evidence that makes it necessary to resolve the parties' differing versions of the dispute at trial. See 60 Ivy Street, 822 F.2d at 1435 (citing First Nat'l Bank of Arizona v. Cities Serv. Co., 391 U.S. 253, 88 S.Ct. 1575, 20 L.Ed.2d 569 (1968)); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986).

Thus, the judge's function at the point of summary judgment is limited to determining whether sufficient evidence has been presented to make the issue a proper jury question, and not to judge the evidence and make findings of fact. "[A]t the summary judgment stage the judge's function is not himself to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to decide whether there is a genuine issue for trial." 60 Ivy Street, 822 F.2d at 1436 (quoting Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249, 106 S.Ct. 2505).

Although patent infringement analysis usually involves both issues of law and questions of fact, summary judgment of non infringement may still be proper. See Phonometrics Inc. v. Northern Telecom. Inc., 133 F.3d 1459, 1463 (Fed.Cir.1998).

The Court reviews Defendant Pemberton's motion and relevant portions of the record considering this standard and concludes that Plaintiff JRB Company's infringement claims fail.

III. Claim Construction

The construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim, is a question of law. See Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370, 383-91, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d 577 (1996).

In resolving a claim of patent infringement, a court must "first determine the meaning and scope of the patent claims at issue, a question of law, before the fact finder may resolve whether the accused device infringes the patent claims as construed by the court, a question of fact." Storer v. Hayes Microcomputer Prod., Inc., 960 F.Supp. 498, 500 (D.Mass.1997).

In construing a patent claim, the Court looks first to the three sources of intrinsic evidence of record: the patent itself, including the claims, the specification, and, if in evidence, the prosecution history. See Genentech, Inc. v. Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, 989 F.Supp. 359 (D.Mass. 1997)(citing Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed.Cir.1996)). The claim language defines the scope of the claim and "a construing court does not accord the specification, prosecution history, and other relevant evidence the same weight as the claims themselves, but consults these sources to give the necessary context to the claim language." Eastman Kodak Co. v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 114 F.3d 1547, 1552 (Fed.Cir.1997).

Reliance upon extrinsic evidence is improper where the public record —, i.e., the claims, specifications, and file history — unambiguously defines the scope of the claims. See Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d at 1588. The Court looks to extrinsic evidence to help in construing a patent claim only if the intrinsic evidence is ambiguous.³

In interpreting the claims and specification, the construing court interprets words "as one of skill in the art at the time of the invention would understand them." Eastman Kodak, 114 F.3d at 1555. In addition, "the court should also consider the patent's prosecution history ... in order to ascertain the true meaning of the language used in the patent claim." Markman, 52 F.3d at 980; see also Standard Oil Co. v. American Cyanamid Co., 774 F.2d 448, 452 (Fed.Cir.1985) ("[T]he prosecution history (or file wrapper) limits the interpretation of...