Federal Circuit Affirms ITC Refusal to Block Import of Marine Air Conditioner Products

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Dometic Corp. v. International Trade Commission, affirming a final determination that Citimarine, L.L.C., and other intervenors did not violate Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The CAFC determined that the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) correctly concluded that Dometic Corp. and Dometic Sweden AB failed to prove a violation through the import of certain marine air conditioning systems. The court affirmed the ITC finding that several claims of the asserted patent are invalid for anticipation and that the accused products do not infringe the remaining claims, thus denying relief in the form of an exclusion order blocking import of the products into the United States.

U.S. Patent No. 8,056,351 describes a marine air conditioning system designed for easy installation in tight and confined spaces on boats. The patent covers a device with a main body, a blower, and an assembly with specific components and rotational properties to alter the orientation of the blower outlet. Dometic introduced this technology to address the challenge of providing airflow while allowing flexible installation, while minimizing the system’s height in confined spaces. The invention uses two types of rotation to enable installation of the unit in many differently configured nautical vehicles where limited space and numerous nearby air-obstructing objects are present.

In November 2022, Dometic filed a complaint with the ITC alleging that the importation and sale of certain marine air conditioning systems by Citimarine, Mabru Power Systems, Inc., Shanghai Hopewell Industrial Co. Ltd., and Shanghai Hehe Industrial Co. Ltd. infringed claims 1 through 2, 4 through 5, 7, and 18 through 22 of the ‘351 patent. The ITC instituted an investigation the following month. An administrative law judge issued an initial summary determination finding that a prior art product referred to as the Vector Compact anticipates claims 1 through 2, 4 through 5, and 7, and the Commission affirmed this determination. The administrative law judge later issued a final initial determination concluding that no violation occurred regarding claims 18 through 22 because Dometic did not prove infringement or satisfaction of the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement.

Writing for the CAFC, Judge Taranto found that the ITC properly concluded that the Vector Compact product anticipates claims 1 through 2, 4 through 5, and 7. Dometic argued that the claim term “assembly” must be physically disjointed from the “main body” except for attaching to each other. Dometic relied on a presumption that separately listed claim limitations indicate separate and distinct physical structures, citing Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. Tyco Healthcare Group, LP. The Federal Circuit rejected this argument, explaining that the context provided by the patent as a whole overcomes any such presumption. The court noted that the specification and figures show that a guiding cover, which is part of the assembly, can be “mounted above the drain pan” and included in the main body. The court also pointed out that the abstract explicitly describes “a main body including an assembly.” It further noted that the shroud in the Vector Compact product contains components that are part of the main body, “precluding the shroud from being entirely distinct from either the assembly or the guiding cover.”

Dometic also argued that the ITC erred in finding no infringement and no domestic industry for claims 18 through 22 based on an incorrect claim construction of the “first axis” limitation. The Federal Circuit disagreed, affirming the ITC construction that requires “two structurally and functionally distinct rotational degrees of freedom.” The court explained that the claim language naturally reads as requiring two independent rotation hubs, one for the blower and one for the assembly. The court reasoned that the specification teaches this configuration to solve the problem of controlling the device’s height and to allow flexible installation in confined spaces. The court rejected the argument that the first axis and second axis may collapse into a single functional rotation, noting that “the fact that the blower and duct element are coupled does not eliminate the distinct structural roles of the two modes of rotation.” The court emphasized that “even if the axes may be colinear, that alignment would not collapse the two modes of rotation into one.”

The Federal Circuit further noted that the prosecution history supports the ITC construction requiring two modes of rotation. The court observed that Dometic amended the claim during prosecution to specify a “first axis” and added an assembly limitation for adjusting the blower about a “second axis” to secure allowance of the claim. The court concluded that adopting the construction proposed by Dometic “would effectively reverse this change during prosecution and collapse the two axes in as-issued claim 18 into the single rotational axis of the pre-amendment version of the claim.” The court emphasized that the original claim language required only that the blower be rotatable about an axis, and that the addition of the first and second-axis limitations was necessary to overcome prior art. The Federal Circuit therefore affirmed the ITC’s final determination in full.

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