MedIdea, LLC v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. (17-cv-11172).

MedIdea accused DePuy of infringing four patents related to knee replacements in Illinois, with the case transferred to Massachusetts in light of the TC Heartland decision. MedIdea conceded non-infringement on all but one claim following claim construction. In November, Judge Sorokin granted DePuy summary judgment of non-infringement on the sole remaining claim, finding that the claims as construed required multiple cam surfaces that were absent in the accused knee prosthetics. Judge Sorokin further construed the claim over MedIdea 2019s objection, finding that MedIdea 2019s post-construction amended contentions created issues that required further construction of the claim, and that in any event if the infringement issue related to a claim construction issue that the court had not yet resolved, the court was duty-bound to construe the term. He then determined that, while the claim itself did not so require, the intrinsic evidence taken as a whole required the claimed 201cpoints of cam action 201d to mean 201cconvex surfaces, 201d in part because every embodiment of the specification showed convex cam surfaces. He acknowledged that this, standing alone, is not sufficient to so limit the claims, but found this fact to still have a bearing on the construction of the term, and that, combined with statements made by MedIdea in both the prosecution of the patents and in their initial complaint and contentions filed in the litigation (and since abandoned for MedIdea 2019s current theory of infringement), the claims should be so construed. In particular, in an IPR proceeding on the patents-in-suit. MedIdea characterized the 201cdisclosed and claimed invention 201d as having points of cam action with convex surfaces 2013 the use of 201cdisclosed and claimed invention 201d estopped any argument that MedIdea was discussing only non-limiting examples. Notably, Judge Sorokin did not place any estoppel on DePuy based on their statements made in the IPR, because as the non-patentee, their statements did not become a part of the prosecution history of the patents and because their positions were not adopted by the Board and thus did not create a judicial estoppel situation.
MedIdea conceded that, under this claim construction, the accused prosthesis lacks multiple convex cam surfaces and thus does not infringe, resulting in summary judgment in favor of DePuy. Judge Sorokin subsequently entered final judgment of non-infringement and dismissed DePuy 2019s counterclaims without prejudice.