Braintree v. Breckenridge and the potential danger of stipulation to a claim construction from an earlier case

Abstract

Stipulating to be bound by an earlier claim construction decision has many advantages: it streamlines the case, saves time and money on litigation costs, and allows parties to focus their arguments on real areas of disagreement. However, sometimes parties that are looking for clarity will stipulate to an earlier claim construction, only to discover that an unforeseen consequence of that construction is fatal to their case. One pharmaceutical company learned this lesson the hard way, when it stipulated to be bound by a construction rendered in an earlier case involving a different defendant. The Federal Circuit ruled that the earlier construction had implications for a term not explicitly construed in the earlier case, thus defeating a noninfringement argument predicated on a new construction for that term.