David Netzer Consulting, LLC v. Shell Oil Co.

Netzer owns the 496 patent, entitled “Process for the Coproduction of Benzene from Refinery Sources and Ethylene by Steam Cracking,” which describes a process for the coproduction of ethylene and purified benzene from refinery mixtures. The district court entered summary judgment of noninfringement. The court did not formally construe the claims, but, implicitly agreed with defendant (Shell) that “fractionating” does not include extraction. The court found no literal infringement, reasoning that “Netzer’s method does not include extraction and does not yield benzene of 99.9% purity” and that “[t]o infringe, Shell would have to eliminate the extraction step and still produce benzene purified to at least 80%.” The court also found no infringement under the doctrine of equivalents because Netzer is barred by “specific exclusion, prosecution-history estoppel, and prior art.” The Federal Circuit affirmed; no reasonable jury would find that the accused process performs substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain substantially the same result. View "David Netzer Consulting, LLC v. Shell Oil Co." on Justia Law