Authored by: Jeremy J. Gustrowsky
In FMC Corp. v. Sharda USA, LLC, the Federal Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that had barred Sharda from selling its insecticide product, finding that the lower court misinterpreted the scope of FMC’s patents. FMC owns U.S. Patent Nos. 9,107,416 and 9,596,857, which cover insecticidal and miticidal compositions containing bifenthrin and a cyano-pyrethroid. The dispute centered on whether the term “composition” in these patents should be limited to only “stable compositions,” as the district court had ruled.
The Federal Circuit found that the district court improperly imported a “stability” requirement into the patent claims based on language from an earlier provisional application and a related patent. Critically, when FMC filed the patents at issue, it deliberately removed all references to “stability” from the specification, signaling a change in the intended meaning of “composition.” The CAFC held that claim terms should be given their plain and ordinary meaning unless the patent itself clearly limits them, and that changes made during the patenting process are significant in understanding what the claims actually cover.
Because of this error in claim construction, the district court’s analysis of whether Sharda’s product anticipated or made obvious FMC’s patents was also flawed. The Federal Circuit also clarified that an accused infringer, like Sharda, only needs to raise a “substantial question” of invalidity to defeat a preliminary injunction—not prove actual invalidity. The court further noted that preamble language such as “miticidal” is generally not limiting unless it’s essential to the invention.
This decision underscores the importance of precise drafting and the consequences of changing language between a provisional application and the final patent. Patent owners cannot rely on deleted limitations to narrow their claims in litigation. The case was sent back to the district court for further proceedings using the correct, broader interpretation of “composition.”