Federal Circuit: Claim Construction Not Forbidden Per Se at Motion to Dismiss Stage

On October 18, 2024, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in UTTO Inc. v. Metrotech Corp., No. 2023-145 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 18, 2024), addressing, in relevant part, the propriety of claim construction at the Rule 12 stage. The issue reached the Federal Circuit on appeal from the Northern District of California after a denied motion for a preliminary injunction (UTTO Inc. v. Metrotech Corp., No. 22-cv-01904-WHO, 2022 WL 1814145, at *6 (N.D. Cal. June 2, 2022)) and three dismissed iterations of the Complaint.

UTTO’s patent covers a process for detecting and identifying underground utility lines and the like, and in denying UTTO’s motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissing the complaints thereafter, the district court construed claim language “group of buried asset data points” in accordance with its ordinary…