Cyntec Company, Ltd. v. Chilisin Electronics Corp.
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 3:18-cv-00939
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Cyntec v. Chilisin, Judge Hamilton denied Chilisin’s proposed claim construction and required any jury instruction to follow the existing summary-judgment ruling.
The order directly affected Chilisin’s proposed claim construction and both parties’ proposed jury instructions concerning the “by means of” limitation. It required any future instruction on that limitation to conform to the court’s earlier summary-judgment ruling.
What happened
Cyntec Company, Ltd. v. Chilisin Electronics Corp. concerns the meaning of the patent-claim phrase “by means of.” Chilisin asked the court to reopen claim construction, while Cyntec argued that the court had already adopted the phrase’s plain and ordinary meaning.
The court had rejected additional claim-construction proceedings and directed the parties to submit proposed jury instructions addressing the phrase. Chilisin instead filed a new proposed claim construction and said it would submit proposed jury instructions later.
The court denied Chilisin’s proposed construction because Chilisin lacked permission to file it and had not made the showing required for reconsideration. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton also stated that any future jury instruction must conform to the court’s earlier summary-judgment ruling; the court did not adopt an instruction at that time.
The detailed version
- Cyntec Company, Ltd. v. Chilisin Electronics Corp. · No. 3:18-cv-00939
- Phyllis Hamilton
- June 17, 2021
Background
At a May 20, 2021 case-management conference, Chilisin argued that the proper meaning of the “by means of” limitation remained unresolved and requested additional claim-construction proceedings. Cyntec responded that the court had already decided during claim construction that the phrase should have its plain and ordinary meaning.
The court rejected Chilisin’s request to reopen claim construction. Instead, it directed the parties to submit proposed jury instructions concerning the limitation, along with supporting briefs and response briefs. Chilisin filed a newly proposed claim construction rather than a proposed jury instruction and acknowledged in a footnote that it intended to submit proposed jury instructions later.
Rulings
The court denied Chilisin’s proposed claim construction because Chilisin did not have permission to file a new construction nearly two years after the court had construed the claims. The court also denied the proposal to the extent it effectively sought reconsideration because Chilisin had not attempted to satisfy Civil Local Rule 7-9(b), which requires reasonable diligence and one of several specified grounds, such as newly discovered facts, a change in law, or a manifest failure to consider material facts or arguments.
The court reaffirmed that “by means of” would be given its plain and ordinary meaning. After reviewing the parties’ cited cases, however, the court concluded that the jury might need additional guidance. That guidance would reflect the court’s summary-judgment ruling that the hardness difference affects the temperature but is not the only possible cause of a lower temperature.
Because neither party had proposed a jury instruction incorporating that summary-judgment ruling, the court stated that it would not adopt a jury instruction at that time. The court warned that it would reject any instruction inconsistent with the summary-judgment ruling. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton entered the order on June 17, 2021.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.