On October 18, 2024, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential
decision in UTTO Inc. v. Metrotech
Corp., No. 2023-145 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 18, 2024), addressing, in
relevant part, the propriety of claim construction at the Rule 12
stage. The issue reached the Federal Circuit on appeal from the
Northern District of California after a denied motion for a
preliminary injunction (UTTO Inc. v. Metrotech Corp., No.
22-cv-01904-WHO, 2022 WL 1814145, at *6 (N.D. Cal. June 2, 2022))
and three dismissed iterations of the Complaint.
UTTO's patent covers a process for detecting and identifying
underground utility lines and the like, and in denying UTTO's
motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissing the complaints
thereafter, the district court construed claim language "group
of buried asset data points" in accordance with its ordinary
meaning. On appeal, UTTO argued this was improper, relying on
Nalco Co. v. Chem-Mod, LLC, 883 F.3d 1337 (Fed. Cir. 2018)
for the proposition
