Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in Evolusion Concepts, Inc. v. HOC Events, Inc., No. 2021-1987 (Jan. 14, 2022), reversing the district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement and denial of summary judgment of infringement.
Evolusion Concepts, Inc. sued Juggernaut Tactical, Inc. for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,765,845, titled “Method and Device for Converting Firearm with Detachable Magazine to a Firearm with Fixed Magazine.” Both parties moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted judgment in favor of Juggernaut. The district court’s noninfringement ruling was based on its construction of the term “magazine catch bar,” which it construed as excluding “factory-installed magazine catch bars.” Evolusion appealed.
The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded for further proceedings. The Court reviewed the district court’s claim construction de novo because the district court relied only on intrinsic evidence; namely, one sentence of the specification and unasserted, dependent claim 15. Claim 15 requires a user to remove all factory-installed parts, including the magazine catch bar, to allow for installation of the claimed invention, which also includes a magazine catch bar. Juggernaut argued that dependent claim 15’s use of the term “factory-installed” served to narrow the meaning of the term “magazine catch bar” as used in the independent claims. The Court rejected the argument that the dependent claim narrowed the independent claims, explaining that the added limitation of removing “factory-installed” magazine catch bars in claim 15 does not preclude reinstallation of those same bars to practice the invention. The Court also rejected the district court’s reliance on a single sentence of the specification, noting that the specification’s discussion of what parts to remove before installation of the invention did not preclude the reinstallation of a factory-installed magazine catch bar. The Court also rejected Juggernaut’s invitation to limit the scope of the claims based on the embodiments depicted and discussed in the specification, explaining that nothing in the specification suggested limiting the term “magazine catch bar” beyond its ordinary meaning. Having concluded that the plain and ordinary meaning of “magazine catch bar” did not exclude factory-installed parts, the Court reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement and its denial of summary judgment of infringement of the independent claims of the patent. The Court remanded for further proceedings on the other asserted claims.