Claims Not Limited To Preferred Embodiment

Inline Plastics Corp. v. Easypak, LLC

In correcting the district court's claim construction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated the district court's judgment of non-infringement and remanded, finding that the claims were improperly limited to a specific embodiment. Inline Plastics Corp. v. Easypak, LLC, Case No. 14-1305 (Fed. Cir., Aug. 27, 2015) (Newman, J.).

Inline Plastics sued EasyPak for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,118,003 (the '003 patent), which is directed to tamper-resistant plastic food containers.  The district court construed the claim term "frangible section" to mean "a removable tear strip, delimited by at least two severable score lines" and the term "tamper evident bridge" to mean a structure containing "a removable tear strip, delimited by at least two severable score lines."  Inline moved for entry of final judgement of non-infringement on the premise that the claims as construed are not infringed, since