(Unpublished Opinion) (Fed. Cir. July 8, 2004)
Wasinger sued Levi for infringement of his patented pre-fading technology. (U.S. Patent No. 5,366,510). At the district court level, the Judge granted Levi summary judgment of non-infringement after holding a Markman hearing to construe the claims. On Appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated, finding that the district court had incorrectly limited Wasinger’s claims to a “single-step process limitation” since such a limitation was “unsupported by the claim language and the written description.”
In dissent, DYK agreed with the district court’s holding “that there was a disclaimer in the prosecution history of multi-step processes involving subsequent oxidation steps.”