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United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit



2007-1214


OATEY CO.,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

IPS CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellee.




Jay R. Campbell, Renner, Otto, Boisselle & Sklar, LLP, of Cleveland, Ohio,
argued for plaintiff-appellant. With him on the brief were Donald L. Otto and Mark C.
Johnson.


Joseph A. Yanny, Yanny & Smith, of Los Angeles, California, argued for
defendant-appellee.

Appealed from: United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio

Judge Kathleen M. OMalley United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit




2007-1214



OATEY
CO.,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

IPS
CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellee.


Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in case
no. 1:03-CV-1231, Judge Kathleen M. O'Malley.

__________________________

DECIDED: January 30, 2008
__________________________


Before NEWMAN, SCHALL, and LINN, Circuit Judges.

NEWMAN, Circuit Judge.



The Oatey Company appeals the summary judgment of the United States District
Court for the Northern District of Ohio, ruling that U.S. Patent No. 6,148,850, owned by
Oatey, is not infringed by IPS Corporation. The patented invention concerns washing
machine outlet boxes, which are boxes that are installed in wall recesses during
construction of a house in order to collect hoses for the input and output water flow of
washing machines and other household appliances, particularly air conditioners. After a

2007-1214
2
Markman hearing, the district court construed disputed claim terms and then granted
summary judgment of non-infringement in favor of IPS, and dismissed IPS's counterclaims
without prejudice.
1
We now modify the district court's claim construction, vacate the
summary judgment of non-infringement, and remand for further proceedings.

The Patented Invention
Washing machines require inputs of hot and cold water, and produce waste water
that is expelled through a pipe or hose. In the plumbing of older residential buildings the
water supply pipes and the drain pipes or hoses were not always grouped together, and
often the drainage was expelled into a sink basin or tub. Newer homes, however, often
include a built-in "outlet box" placed between support studs in a wall, the box having input
ports for receiving hot and cold water pipes and outlet ports for drainage.
In plumbing designs until the 1980s, the outlet box typically included a single
drainage port that in some buildings was designed to receive waste water from more than
one appliance. This design was common in the Southwest where air conditioning
equipment was often located on the roof and the condensate line fed into the outlet box
drain port. Some municipal plumbing codes were changed to prohibit designs in which
other appliances shared the drain port used by a washing machine. As a result, plumbing

1
Oatey Co. v. IPS Corp., No. 1:03 CV 1231, 2006 WL 581240 (N.D. Ohio Mar.
8, 2006) (construing claims); Oatey Co. v. IPS Corp., No. 1:03 CV 1231 (N.D. Ohio Oct. 30,
2006) (clarifying claim construction); Oatey Co. v. IPS Corp., No. 1:03 CV 1231 (N.D. Ohio
Feb. 23, 2007) (summary judgment). supply manufacturers such as Oatey and IPS designed outlet boxes with separate ports to
receive the drainage of appliances in addition to the washing machine.
In 1999 Oatey filed the '850 patent application, directed to an outlet box that
accommodated two output drain ports to comply with plumbing codes, and that also had a
"tailpiece" to collect the effluent from these ports and release it into a single drain pipe. The
structure was designed for ease of installation, and Oatey explains that the prior outlet
boxes required that the installer perform several welds to join separate drain pipes from the
two drain ports into a single pipe below the outlet box, as illustrated in the district court's
opinion on claim construction:


PRIOR ART
Oatey, 2006 WL 581240, at *6 (describing prior art). Oatey points to the six welds in this
standard prior design, and explains that for the '850 patent a single tailpiece is part of the


2007-1214
3 outlet box and the installer need perform only a single weld, connecting the drain pipe to
the tailpiece. Oatey states that its design is recognized in the industry as a useful
innovation and is commercially successful, displacing prior designs. The Oatey structure is
illustrated in Figure 1 of the '850 patent:














2007-1214
4
The tailpiece (22) is affixed to the bottom wall (34) and receives a washing machine drain
hose (18) and a condensate line from an air conditioner (20). The specification states that
the tailpiece is preferably integrally formed with the bottom wall, but alternatively may be
welded to the bottom wall. The interior of the tailpiece contains two fluid passageways (24)
and (26), which feed into a drain pipe (28). At the mouths of these fluid passageways are
two juxtaposed drain ports, shown in Figure 2 at (54) and (56) in a top-down view of the
bottom wall:






Figure 2 shows an optional test cap (52) that fits into a generally oblong opening (50) in the
bottom wall. The test cap serves to temporarily seal this opening for pressure testing of the
installation. The base of the test cap is welded to the bottom wall and two frangible
knockout portions are removed to form the two juxtaposed drain ports (54) and (56).
The '850 patent drawings also illustrate an embodiment wherein the two juxtaposed
drain ports are shaped by the sides of the oblong opening in combination with a dividing
wall provided by the tailpiece, as seen in Figure 3 which shows the outlet box without a test
cap:


2007-1214
5








2007-1214
6
Figure 3 shows a dividing wall (72) that separates the tailpiece into the two fluid
passageways (24) and (26), and includes a trapezoidal step (76) at its upper edge. The
trapezoidal step (76) and the boundaries of the opening (50) define two drain ports at the
mouths of two fluid passageways. The '850 specification explains that this trapezoidal step
also accommodates the use of a test cap to pressure-test the installation.

Claim Construction
IPS makes and sells outlet boxes that Oatey states infringe claims 1, 2, 3, 5, and 17
of the '850 patent. Claim 1 is representative, with emphasis added to the clause whose
meaning was disputed and whose interpretation was stipulated to determine non-
infringement:
1.
A washing machine outlet box comprising a housing including a
bottom wall, first and second juxtaposed drain ports in said bottom wall,
and a common tailpiece for both of said drain ports extending from said
bottom wall, said tailpiece extending completely around both of said drain
ports in said bottom wall, said tailpiece having an outlet for connection to a
drain pipe.

The district court postponed its claim construction until this court issued its en banc
decision in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005). The Phillips decision
confirmed that "[i]t is a 'bedrock principle' of patent law that 'the claims of a patent define
the invention to which the patentee is entitled the right to exclude.'" Id. at 1312 (citing
Innova/Pure Water, Inc. v. Safari Water Filtration Systems, Inc., 381 F.3d 1111, 1115 (Fed.
Cir. 2004)). In addition, Phillips confirmed the importance of the specification in claim
construction, 415 F.3d at 1315, and that, in construing the claims of a patent, the court
should also consider the patent's prosecution history if it is in evidence, id. at 1317.

2007-1214
7
The district court construed the clause "first and second juxtaposed drain ports in
said bottom wall" as "two separate identifiable physical elements that are adjacent or near
each other." The court further determined that this clause requires that there be two
separate physical openings in the bottom wall of the outlet box, as shown in Figure 2, and
not a single opening divided by a wall in the attached tailpiece, as shown in Figure 3. The
district court rejected Oatey's position that the term "first and second juxtaposed drain
ports" of cla