Kimberly-Clark v. First Quality: preliminary injunctions

In Kimberly-Clark v. First Quality, the legal issue related to granting a
preliminary injunction. The subject matter involves training pants used by toddlers to
assist in toilet training. Kimberly-Clark, a major partici-
pant in the personal care industry, develops and manu-
factures disposable training pants with refastenable side seams.

On obvious variants:

See In re Translogic Tech., Inc., 504 F.3d 1249, 1259 (Fed.
Cir. 2007) (“[O]bvious variants of prior art references are
themselves part of the public domain.”).

**Grant of preliminary injunction in error:

As a result,
First Quality has raised a substantial question of validity
for Claims 1 and 3-5 of the ’187 patent that cannot be
characterized as substantially meritless. Therefore, the
district court abused its discretion in granting a prelimi-
nary injunction for these claims.

**Re-exams and preliminary injunctions:

We have explained that “the current
posture of . . . inter partes reexamination proceedings at
the PTO” is relevant “when evaluating . . . the likelihood
of success on the merits” at the preliminary injunction
stage. Procter & Gamble Co. v. Kraft549 F.3d 842, 847 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

**Kopykake is cited:

See Jack Guttman, Inc. v. Kopykake Enters., 302 F.3d
1352, 1361-62 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (“Our precedent supports
the proposition that grounding a decision on a prelimi-
nary injunction on a claim construction at odds with an
unambiguous definition in the intrinsic evidence consti-
tutes an abuse of discretion.”).

**As to the '143 patent

First Quality has raised a substantial question of validity
for Claims 63-65, 67-68, and 142-143 of the ’143 patent
that cannot be characterized as substantially meritless.
As a result, we hold that the district court abused its
discretioclaims.