Solta asserted that Lumenis infringed two patents related to improvements in controlled cooling of skin and other tissue being treated by lasers. The Court construed the claims in October, refusing to limit claim terms to specific embodiments in the specification and finding the disputed terms to be definite. In particular, Judge Casper refused to find the modifiers “substantially” and “approximately” to be inherently indefinite, noting that the terms are definite where the patent specification sets forth sufficient information on the scope of the term being modified. She did, however, agree with Lumenis that the “cooling” limitation should be limited to colling using cryogenic fluid, finding the specification identified non-cryogenic cooling as “typical of the prior art,” thus disclaiming such methods. This corresponded with statements in the prosecution history stating that the cryogenic cooling was the most important feature of the invention.
In light of this claim construction, Solta determined that it could no longer maintain the infringement claims. Accordingly, Solta and Lumenis agreed to a stipulation of partial and non-final summary judgment of non-infringement. This allows the construction to be immediately appealed.
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