Louisville Bedding Co. v. Pillowtex Corp.
| Decision Date | 25 July 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-1595.,05-1595. |
| Citation | 455 F.3d 1377 |
| Parties | LOUISVILLE BEDDING COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PILLOWTEX CORPORATION, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit |
Hartwell P. Morse, III, Welsh & Katz, Ltd., of Chicago, Illinois, argued for plaintiff-appellant. With him on the brief was Philip D. Segrest, Jr.
Before LOURIE, SCHALL, and PROST, Circuit Judges.
Louisville Bedding Company appeals from the decision of the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky denying Louisville's motion for partial relief from the court's final judgment of noninfringement. Louisville Bedding Co. v. Pillowtex Corp., No. 3:94CV-722-S (W.D.Ky. Aug. 4, 2005). Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Louisville's motion, we affirm.
Louisville manufactures and sells home furnishing products, including mattress pads. It is also the owner of U.S. Patent 5,249,322, entitled "Fitted Mattress Cover and Method of Making Same." The '322 patent covers a mattress pad with a pad skirt material that is capable of expanding to cover mattresses of varying thickness. In separate actions, Louisville filed suit against Pillowtex Corporation in 1994 and Perfect Fit Industries, Inc. in 1998, accusing both of infringing the '322 patent. Both Pillowtex and Perfect Fit are competing manufacturers and sellers of mattress pads. Both cases were eventually terminated via settlement agreements, and the district court in each of the cases entered final judgment.
Since its settlement with Louisville in 1998, Pillowtex has, according to Louisville, gone out of business. Based on events that occurred in the mattress pad industry after Pillowtex went out of business and what Louisville perceives to be a conflicting judgment that issued from its case against Perfect Fit, Louisville sought to reopen the Pillowtex case and have the district court in that case vacate a portion of its final judgment. In a summary order issued after a hearing, the court denied Louisville's motion.
A brief recitation of the litigation history of Louisville against both Pillowtex and Perfect Fit is provided below.
In December 1994, Louisville filed suit against Pillowtex for infringement of the '322 patent by, inter alia, sale of its mattress pad model that used Xymid, LLC's 4059 skirt material ("the 4059 mattress pad"). In October 1997, the district court construed certain claim limitations of the '322 patent and granted summary judgment of noninfringement with respect to the 4059 mattress pad. In March 1998, the parties reached a settlement as to the Pillowtex mattress pad models accused of infringing Louisville's patents, including the 4059 mattress pad and the '322 patent. Under the settlement agreement, Pillowtex paid Louisville a sum of money and took a license to numerous of its patents, including the '322 patent. Pillowtex also agreed to mark the 4059 mattress pad as licensed under Louisville's patents, including the '322 patent. In April 1998, on the parties' joint motion, the court entered a final judgment dismissing with prejudice all claims that were or could have been asserted except Louisville's claims relating to the 4059 mattress pad. With respect to the 4059 mattress pad, the court entered final judgment that that mattress pad did not infringe, either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents, claims 1, 2, 4, 8, 10-13, 16, 18, 28, 34-37, 41, and 42 of the '322 patent.
After the parties' settlement, Pillowtex filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and again in 2003, and, according to Louisville, Pillowtex was dissolved in 2003.1 One ramification of Pillowtex's dissolution was that Xymid, a spin-off of a DuPont division with whom Pillowtex originally had an exclusive supply agreement and who is currently the exclusive manufacturer of the 4059 mattress pad skirt material, was no longer bound by its exclusive supply agreement with Pillowtex. Free from that agreement, Louisville asserts, Xymid began selling its 4059 mattress pad skirt material to other manufacturers of mattress pads, including Perfect Fit and National Sleep Products ("NSP").
In 1998, soon after the Pillowtex matter was settled, Louisville filed suit against Perfect Fit for infringement of the '322 patent. The Perfect Fit action was filed in the same district court as the Pillowtex action was, and the court determined that it would give the claim construction from the earlier Pillowtex action collateral estoppel effect. As in the Pillowtex case, Perfect Fit and Louisville settled their suit by having Perfect Fit take a license to the '322 patent and agreeing to mark Perfect Fit's mattress pads accused of infringement as licensed under the '322 patent. The settlement also contained a provision requiring Louisville and Perfect Fit to resolve future disputes involving potential infringement of the '322 patent through alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") means.
In 2003, Perfect Fit contacted Louisville to activate the ADR provision for determining possible infringement by its new mattress pad materials. Once Pillowtex went out of business, Xymid's exclusive supply arrangement with Pillowtex for the 4059 mattress pad skirt material was effectively terminated. Xymid then began supplying Perfect Fit with the 4059 mattress pad skirt material. Pursuant to the ADR provision, the parties selected an arbitrator to determine whether Xymid's 4059 skirt material would infringe the '322 patent if it were used in Perfect Fit's mattress pads. The arbitrator concluded that it would literally infringe the patent. In reaching his decision, the arbitrator determined that he was not bound by the claim construction from the earlier Pillowtex and Perfect Fit litigations, and instead construed the claims independently. In February 2005, the district court, on Louisville's motion, entered judgment on the arbitrator's award precluding Perfect Fit from manufacturing mattress pads using Xymid's 4059 skirt material.
Despite the fact that Pillowtex and Louisville concluded their litigation in 1998, Louisville, in May 2005, filed a Rule 60(b)(6) motion to reopen the case and have the district court partially vacate its judgment of noninfringement of the '322 patent by the 4059 mattress pad. On August 4, 2005, after conducting a hearing, the district court denied Louisville's motion. Louisville timely appealed, and we have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
A district court's denial of a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) is not a procedural issue unique to patent law, and thus we will apply the law of the regional circuit court, in this case, the Sixth Circuit. Midwest Indus., Inc. v. Karavan Trailers, Inc., 175 F.3d 1356, 1359 (Fed.Cir.1999). Moreover, the underlying reasons for Louisville's Rule 60(b)(6) motion, viz., a change of circumstances in the mattress pad marketplace and two possibly conflicting district court judgments, do not uniquely implicate patent law. Flex-Foot, Inc. v. CRP, Inc., 238 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed.Cir.2001). The Sixth Circuit reviews a denial of a Rule 60(b)(6) motion for abuse of discretion. Blue Diamond Coal Co. v. Trs. of the UMWA Combined Benefit Fund, 249 F.3d 519, 524 (6th Cir.2001).
On appeal, Louisville seeks to vacate the district court's judgment that the 4059 mattress pad does not infringe claims 34-37, 41, and 42 of the '322 patent and the claim construction underlying that judgment. Louisville contends that unforeseen events have occurred in the mattress pad marketplace since 1998 (when the Pillowtex matter was settled) that require us to vacate a portion of the district court's final judgment. According to Louisville, when it agreed to settle its suit against Pillowtex, Pillowtex and Xymid had an exclusive supply agreement for Xymid's 4059 mattress pad skirt material and there were no indications at that...
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