Richard Gramm, et al. v. Deere & Company
Before Lourie, Reyna, and Cunningham. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa
Summary: Disclosure of an additional function in the specification should not disqualify a structure that performs the claimed function of a means-plus-function limitation.
Gramm sued Deere & Co. for infringement of a patent directed to controlling the header of a crop harvester. The asserted claims recited a “control means … for raising or lowering the header in accordance with said first signal in maintaining the header a designated height above the soil.” During claim construction, the parties agreed the claim element was a means-plus-function limitation, that the claimed function was raising and lowering the header at a designated height, and that the specification disclosed a “head controller” for performing the function. Deere, however, argued that the “head controller” was not sufficiently definite structure because the specification explained that the “head controller” was a commercial embodiment “as incorporated in a Deere combine.” At the time of the invention, there were three commercially available Deere head controllers—one based on logic circuitry and two based on microprocessors. Deere persuaded the district court that the specification was not referring to the circuit-based controller because the specification described the “head controller” as controlling both (1) height and (2) lateral position, and the circuit-based controller controlled only height. The district court also agreed with Deere that, because the only commercially available headers that performed both functions were microprocessor-based, the specification needed to disclose an algorithm for performing the function. Because the specification did not disclose such an algorithm, the district court held the claims indefinite.
The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. The Federal Circuit acknowledged that the specification described a “head controller” capable of performing the claimed function and capable of performing a secondary function. Even though the circuit-based controller could not perform the secondary function, it could perform the claimed function. Thus, the district court erred in excluding the circuit-based controller from its identification of corresponding structure. Further, because the circuit-based controller was not a general-purpose computer, the specification did not need to disclose an algorithm for performing the claimed function. Thus, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s indefiniteness ruling.
Co-Author: Peter Feider (NY State Bar Pending)
Editor: Sean Murray
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