Advanced Steel Recovery, LLC v. X-Body Equip., Inc., No. 14-1829 (Fed. Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseAdvanced Steel owns a patent describing systems and methods of loading shipping containers with bulk material for storage or transport. Material is loaded into the top of a rectangular container packer, which is moved along a transfer base by a hydraulically powered piston-and-cylinder unit toward a shipping container. A second piston-and-cylinder unit then pushes the material out of the container packer and into the shipping container by a push blade. The district court entered summary judgment, and the Federal Circuit affirmed, that the patent was not infringed by “Acculoader,” which has a container packer piston-and-cylinder unit connected to the floor of the container packer, approximately 35% down its length. The court determined that the patent did not contemplate a particular definition of the term “proximate end” and that the ordinary meaning applies. In the Acculoader, the “connection point [of the container packer piston-and-cylinder unit to the container packer] is not at the proximate end,” so that “the Acculoader does not literally infringe the 950 patent.” On the doctrine of equivalents, the court determined that “[n]o reasonable jury could find [the Acculoader’s] connection point to be equivalent to the ‘container packer proximate end.’”
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.