Teashot.LLC v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.

Teashot.LLC (Teashot) (plaintiff) owned a patent that sought to adapt prior art coffee-pod machines to make tea that would not taste weak despite a short brewing time. Claim 1 of the patent covered a tea-extraction system for producing tea in a coffee-brewing machine. The system involved a tea-extraction container that was a sealed body with an internal compartment containing a tea composition. Claim 1 provided that the sealed body was “constructed of a water-permeable material which allows flow of a fluid through said sealed body to produce a tea extract from said tea composition.” The patent specification’s discussions of fluid flowing through the sealed body also referenced the water-permeable material. The patent discussed no other means for fluid to flow through the sealed body. Teashot sued Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., Keurig, Inc., and Starbucks Corp. (collectively, Green Mountain) (defendants), alleging that Green Mountain’s tea-brewing K-Cup infringed the patent. The K-Cup contained a tea composition and had a foil lid that was punctured by a needle to allow hot water into the cup during the brewing process. Teashot’s owner and the inventor of the patent had admitted that the K-Cup’s foil lid was not water permeable and had further admitted that merely puncturing the lid did not transform the foil into water-permeable material. The district court construed the sealed-body-constructed-of-a-water-permeable-material claim element to mean that the portions of the sealed body through which fluid flowed in and out had to be made of water-permeable material. Based on that claim construction, the district court found that the K-Cup did not literally infringe the patent because the K-Cup did not have a water-permeable material that allowed water to flow into the sealed body. The district court also found that Teashot had waived its right to assert infringement under the doctrine of equivalents because Teashot had not timely disclosed the doctrine as an infringement theory as required by a discovery-scheduling order. The district court thus entered summary judgment of noninfringement in Green Mountain’s favor. Teashot appealed, asserting that the district court had improperly construed the claim. Green Mountain asserted that the district court had correctly construed the claim because the phrase “which allows” linked “water-permeable material” to the “flow of a fluid through said sealed body” and required that the fluid flow through the sealed body via the water-permeable material.