Fraser v. High Liner Foods (USA), Inc., (Fed. Cir. Jul. 8, 2009) (nonprecedential)

In this case, the district court (District of Massachusetts) entered summary judgment against some of the defendants and dismissed the rest of the suit for patent infringement. The Federal Circuit, in a per curiam opinion, affirmed.

The disputed claim related to a method of preparing a fish product. The method required "immersing a fish fillet in room temperature vegetable oil for five to ten minutes, covering the fillet with crumbs, and then freezing." The district court found that certain defendants did not infringe either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents.

The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that the prosecution history of the patent "requires respecting the order of the claimed steps" because the patentees "obtained allowance of their claim only after distinguishing the prior art based on the claimed step of immersing the fillet in oil for a period of five to ten minutes immediately following filleting." For its doctrine of equivalents argument, while the patentees "[did] not grapple at all with their statements during prosecution which the trial court properly held to limit the scope of their claims," their "theory of equivalents infringement rest[ed] on the false belief that the mere presence of vegetable oil in the list of ingredients in a fish product [was] sufficient to warrant liability - without consideration of the condition of the fish when processing beings, the required period of immersion, or the temperature of the oil and the fish."

Because the patentees' "theory of infringement require[d] ignoring not only the precise order of steps of the claimed method, but entire claim elements altogether" and the patentees "simply stat[ed] [during summary judgment] that there are disputed issues of fact regarding infringement by equivalents", the Court affirmed the grant of summary judgment against the patentees.

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