The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently formalized its analytical approach to appellate review of preliminary infringement orders relying on claim construction, holding that an erroneous claim construction likely constitutes an abuse of discretion mandating vacating the injunction. Chamberlain Group, Inc., et. al. v. Lear Corp., Case Nos. 07-1314, -1467 (Fed. Cir. Feb., 19, 2008) (Rader, J.).
Chamberlain reached the Federal Circuit after the district court issued a preliminary injunction order implicitly based, in part, on its construction of the term "binary code." Lear appealed both the claim construction and preliminary injunction orders.
After an exhaustive de novo review, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court's construction of "binary code" as "internally inconsistent and contradictory to the rest of the patent," noting that a preliminary injunction requires an analysis of likelihood of success on the merits and claim construction errors in the case "fundamentally influence[d] the likelihood of success in proving infringement." The panel conducted only a relatively cursory review of the district court's preliminary injunction ruling and vacated the preliminary injunction despite the fact that preliminary injunction rulings are reviewed under the comparatively forgiving abuse-of-discretion standard. Pointing to its own 2006 precedent in SRAM Corp.(see IP Update, Vol. 9, No. 10), the Federal Circuit noted that "where a district court relies on erroneous claim construction in granting injunctive relief, this legal error may well constitute an abuse of discretion requiring this court to vacate the injunction." According to the Court, "a correct claim construction is almost always a prerequisite for imposition of a preliminary injunction."
Practice Note: Almost any error in claim construction will be grounds for reversing a preliminary injunction.
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