RANGE OF MOTION PRODUCTS, LLC v. ARMAID COMPANY INC.
Before Moore, Cunningham, and Hughes. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maine.
Summary: Functional aspects of a design must be separated out when analyzing whether an ordinary observer would find two designs similar, even if those functional aspects result in conceptual similarity.
Range of Motion (RoM) sued Armaid, alleging that Armaid’s “Armaid2” massager infringed RoM’s design patent. The district court first construed the claim to separate out functional aspects from ornamental features and found that many similarities between the devices, such as the shape of the claimed arms, were driven by functional considerations. The district court then compared the differences between the remaining ornamental aspects (including ornamental aspects of the functional features) and held that the designs were “plainly dissimilar” such that no reasonable jury could find substantial similarity. The district court accordingly granted summary judgment of non-infringement.
The Federal Circuit affirmed. The court emphasized that design‑patent infringement requires comparing only the ornamental aspects of the claimed and accused designs, and that functional aspects must be factored out of the analysis. The panel rejected RoM’s argument that conceptual similarity alone, demonstrated by placing images of the devices side by side or overlaying them, could establish infringement. The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that the shape of the arms and other shared features were functional and therefore could be considered only to the extent they contributed to the overall ornamentation.
The Federal Circuit held that, after functional aspects of the designs were filtered out, the remaining ornamental differences made the designs plainly dissimilar to the ordinary observer. The court also affirmed on the alternative basis that, even if the district court should have used a three-way analysis to compare the designs in light of prior art, no reasonable jury could have found that the designs were substantially similar.
Chief Judge Moore dissented, arguing that the “plainly dissimilar” exception should not be used in the substantial similarity analysis, as framing the issue in terms of differences rather than similarities fundamentally affects the analysis.
Editor: Sean Murray
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