The Federal Circuit held that, if there was no literal infringement of the means-plus-function claim, then infringement under the doctrine of equivalents was also precluded as a matter of law unless the "equivalent" was an after-developed technology. The simplicity of this statement belies the debate engendered by Chiuminatta.
In Kraft Foods Inc. v. International Trading Co., the Federal Circuit clears up one aspect of the debate. Kraft involved a patent entitled "Food Package Having a Compartmentalized Rigid Base Tray." The court construed the "protecting back panel" language of the claim to require that the back panel be "relatively rigid." Unfortunately for the patentee, the accused infringer used thin, flexible (i.e., not relatively rigid) polypropylene-laminated paper labels.
