Baldwin Graphic Sys., Inc. v. Siebert, Inc., No. 03 C 7713, 2007 WL 1610449 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 21, 2007) (Moran, J.).*

Judge Moran granted defendant Siebert’s motion for reconsideration of the Court’s earlier claim construction ruling.  Based upon it reconsidered construction, the Court granted Siebert summary judgment of noninfringement of plaintiff Baldwin Graphic Systems’ (“Baldwin”) patent claiming printing press cleaning components. The Court originally construed the claims at issue and then denied Siebert’s first motion for reconsideration in 2005 — the Court held that Siebert’s 2005 motion for reconsideration simply repackaged arguments the Court considered in its original claim construction opinion. At that time the Court construed “reduced air content cleaning fabric” as not excluding fabric having its air content reduced by winding or rewinding the fabric on to a roll. In its current motion, Siebert argued that “reduced air content cleaning fabric” includes only fabric having its air content reduced by mechanical means before being wound on to a roll. The Court acknowledged that this was a new argument and, therefore, considered it.  The Court held that the claim language itself was not helpful in construing the term, but the language of the dependent claims combined with the patent’s specification made clear that “reduced air content cleaning fabric” required that the fabric have its air content reduced by “some method” before being wound on to a roll. Because there was no evidence that Siebert’s fabric underwent no mechanical process for removing air prior to being wound on to a roll, the Court granted Siebert summary judgment of noninfringement.

This opinion is especially remarkable because, while I do not have statistics confirming this, motions for reconsideration do not have a high success rate.  And it is even more rare for a second motion for reconsideration of the same opinion to succeed.

* You can read more about this case in the Blog’s archives.