HERMAN MILLER, INC., Plaintiff, v. TEKNION CORP. and OKAMURA CORP., Defendants., 504 F. Supp. 2d 360

Summary

Defendants entered into a distribution agreement to sell two allegedly infringing office chairs in the U.S. market. Because the '741 patent was a continuation of the '842 patent, both patents shared a common specification, but their claims were directed to different features of various preferred embodiments. Defendants argued that neither chair was infringing because neither included backrest structures claimed by plaintiff. The court construed the claim terms "adjacent," "bow," "bow-shaped," "bowed section," "substantially a lumbar region," and "corresponding" in favor of plaintiff and granted plaintiff partial summary judgment on literal infringement of the '741 patent but denied defendants' motion for partial summary judgment of non-infringement of all the asserted claims of the '741 patent except for claim 10. Plaintiff conceded no literal infringement of claim 10 of the '741 patent, which limited the term "contacts" in claim 1 of the '842 patent. The court found that claim 10 did ...