The CAFC’s decision last week in Wonderland Switzerland v. Evenflo discusses an issue that commonly arises in claim construction, which will interest patent practitioners. The patent claimed a child safety seat that comprised a seat body, an engaging board connected to the seat body, a backrest, and
a driving device movably connected to the backrest,
the driving device comprising:
a connecting member pivotally connected to a first
end of the engaging member; and
a pulling member connected to the connecting member,
for driving the first end of the engaging member to rotate
relative to the backrest when the driving device moves
to a releasing position … .
(Emphasis added). The parties disagreed on the meaning of the phrase “connected to” in the claim above. The trial judge held that the claim encompassed “not only … separate pieces that are later connected, but also … different parts or features that are discrete yet formed out of a continuous base material.” With that construction, the jury found that the accused child safety seat infringed the claim.
On appeal, the accused infringer argued that if “connected to” were properly construed to require the pulling member and connecting member of claim 1 to be physically distinct components, no reasonable jury could have found the accused products infringe because both alleged elements are made of a single piece of plastic in the accused products.” In fact, the accused infringer argued that two previous CAFC decisions confirmed components “connected to” one another are presumed to be physically distinct.
The CAFC disagreed. It first explained that the Becton decision had concluded that two distinct claim elements connected to each other could not both refer to the entirety of a single structure because this would make those two distinct claim elements “one and the same.” And in the Retractable Techs decision, the CAFC expressly declined “to exclude from the scope of the claims [embodiments having two components] that form distinct portions of a single structure” where the two components “serve different purposes” and “cover distinct structural portions of an integral structure.”
The CAFC then looked at the intrinsic evidence:
- the specification that describes embodiments in which the pulling and connecting members are distinct components,
- the claim wording that does not recite a specific process or way of connecting those distinct components,
- the specification’s broad use of “connected to” to encompass the connection of distinct portions of a backrest that are integrally formed (“headrest portion 15 is connected to a body portion 17 closely and formed integrally and movable synchronously with the body portion 17”).
Because “claim terms are normally used consistently throughout the patent,” the CAFC held that “connected to” in the claim “encompasses connections between two distinct portions (i.e., a pulling member and a connecting member) of a single integrally formed plastic component.”
Also, there was no contradiction in the prosecution history, which contained no indication that the “pulling member connected to the connecting member” phrase was intended to require physically separate and distinct components.
The CAFC concluded that the trial judge was correct in his claim construction and that there was substantial evidence supporting the jury verdict of infringement based on that construction.
Takeaway: A claim in which two components are “connected” covers embodiments in which those two components are distinct portions of a single structure, if the specification discloses that the components “serve different purposes” and “cover distinct structural portions of an integral structure.”
