DUNCAN PARKING TECHNOLOGIES v. IPS GROUP, INC.
- Feb 1 2019 |
- Category: CAFC Updates
IPS Group appeals from two district court decisions granting summary judgment of non-infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 8,595,054 and 7,854,310 relating to credit card-enabled, solar-powered, single-space parking meter devices. Duncan Parking Technologies appeals from a related decision of the PTAB in an IPR holding that certain claims of the ’310 patent were not shown to be unpatentable as anticipated by the prior art. With respect to Duncan’s appeal, the CAFC finds that the inventive entity on the ’054 patent (including Schwarz, who is not an inventor on the ’310 patent) conceived a parking meter device including aspects of an electrical system (a significant contribution) which are required by the claims of the ’310 patent. Having been invented by an inventive entity different from that of the ’310 patent, the CAFC concludes that the ’054 patent is anticipatory prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) and reverses the Board’s decision that the claims of the ’310 patent are not unpatentable. With respect to IPS’s appeal, the CAFC affirms the district court’s decision granting summary judgment of non-infringement of the ’310 patent because there is no genuine dispute that the accused Liberty Meter a) does not meet the “cover panel movably attached” limitation and b) does not work in the same way as the claimed invention and that IPS’s doctrine of equivalents argument requires vitiating a claim limitation. The CAFC also concludes that the district court erred by construing “receivable within” as meaning “capable of being contained entirely inside,” and, accordingly, vacates the district court’s decision granting summary judgment of non-infringement of the ’054 patent and remands.