Litigation over bullet stops for live-fire shoot houses

In the non-precedential Bateman v. Por-ta Target, the CAFC affirmed ND Ca on noninfringement and false advertising issues.

The patent at issue was US 5,822,936, to Kyle E. Bateman of Provo, Utah.

The '936 has been cited by four US patents, of relevance to the proposed idea that litigation involves highly cited patents. One of the four citing patents is 6,588,759, also to Bateman, another of the four 6,533,280 is to Sovine and Bateman, and another is to Sovine. The '936 is based on an application that is a continuation-in-part of application 08/008,792 filed Jan. 25, 1993, now abandoned. Presumably, new matter was introduced in the cip, so that the efforts of the cip were not repeated efforts to obtain the claims of the parent. The method of Quillen and Webster would assign a 100% grant rate to the effort of Bateman.

An issue was the construction of the terms "clamp means," and the CAFC cited to ACTV v. Disney, 346 F.3d 1082 (CAFC 2003). As to false advertising, the CAFC cited to Keystone, 997 F.2d 1444 (CAFC 1993).

Of the analysis of a means plus function claim, the CAFC noted the claimed function must be identified and the specification examined to find the structure that performs the function, citing to Generation II Orthotics, 263 F.3d 1356. The CAFC found that the district court had erred in identifying the claimed function, but that the error was harmless. The CAFC cited Micro Chem, 194 F.3d 1350 on the need to identify the function as recited in the claim. For infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, the CAFC noted that the structure would need to involve after-developed technology, not the case here (citing Ishida, 221 F.3d 1310).