Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 1 Filed: 06/30/2021
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC.,
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
ACCESS MASTERS, LLC, BLACKSKY
TECHNOLOGIES, INC., GATEARMS.COM, LLC,
Defendants-Appellees
______________________
2020-2313
______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Southern District of Florida in No. 0:14-cv-62697-RNS,
Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr.
______________________
Decided: June 30, 2021
______________________
ANDREW D. LOCKTON, McHale & Slavin, P.A., Palm
Beach Gardens, FL, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also
represented by EDWARD F. MCHALE.
JEROLD I. SCHNEIDER, Schneider IP Law, Boynton
Beach, FL, argued for defendants-appellees. Also repre-
sented by SPENSYR ANN KREBSBACH, LORRI LOMNITZER,
The Lomnitzer Law Firm, P.A., Boca Raton, FL.
______________________
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 2 Filed: 06/30/2021
2 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
Before NEWMAN, TARANTO, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.
TARANTO, Circuit Judge.
GateArm Technologies, Inc. (GateArm) owns U.S. Pa-
tent Nos. 8,845,125 and 9,157,200, both titled “Vehicle Bar-
rier System with Illuminating Gate Arm and Method.” In
2014, GateArm sued Access Masters LLC, Blacksky Tech-
nologies, Inc., and Gatearms.com, LLC (collectively, Access
Masters) for infringing the ’125 and ’200 patents. In 2016,
the parties settled the dispute, and the district court en-
tered a consent decree based on a signed Settlement Agree-
ment. See Order, GateArm Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters
LLC, No. 0:14-cv-62697 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 29, 2016), ECF No.
53 (Consent Decree); J.A. 1634–36. Later that year, after
Access Masters introduced a modified product, GateArm
moved to reopen the case to obtain a finding that Access
Masters was in contempt of the consent decree for market-
ing and selling the new product and to order such activities
to cease. The magistrate judge to whom the matter was
assigned recommended that GateArm’s motion for con-
tempt be denied, and the district court adopted the recom-
mendation. See Gatearm Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters,
LLC, No. 0:14-cv-62697, 2020 WL 4923637, at *1 (S.D. Fla.
Aug. 21, 2020) (District Court Order). We affirm.
I
A
The ’200 patent issued from an application that was a
continuation of the application that issued as the ’125 pa-
tent, so the two patents share a specification, and both
claim priority to a provisional application filed on June 1,
2012. Both patents involve a “gate arm” of the sort that
may be found at an entry-restricted parking lot or housing
complex. To aid drivers in seeing the arm, a light strip is
placed in a channel inset into the arm. The light strip is
held in place by what the parties have called “fins” (or
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 3 Filed: 06/30/2021
GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC 3
“lips”) that extend, from the corners where the channel
walls meet the arm surface, into the channel opening
through which the light shines. See ’125 patent, figs. 6–9;
’200 patent, figs. 6–9.
In an ex parte reexamination, which resulted in a cer-
tificate issued on September 9, 2015, most claims of the
’125 patent were modified. The ’200 patent issued on Oc-
tober 13, 2015, containing language closely related to the
modified claim language of the ’125 patent adopted during
reexamination.
The ’125 patent’s independent claim 1 now recites:
1. A vehicle barrier system comprising:
a gate arm formed from a single piece of material
having a top convex member and a bottom convex
member defining first and second opposing side
surfaces, a distal end and a proximal end defining
a longitudinal axis therebetween, said proximal
end coupled to a housing having a control system
and power supply to selectively pivot said gate arm
between a horizontal position and a vertical posi-
tion, said gate arm including at least a first elon-
gated inset channel centrally disposed in said first
side surface defined by said top convex member and
said bottom convex member and formed along said
longitudinal axis of said gate arm, said first elon-
gated inset channel having a first opening formed
by a first pair of inset channel sidewalls integrally
joined to a first inset channel backwall, said first
side surface having a first upper sidewall in-
cluding a terminating end and a first lower
sidewall including a terminating end which
ends terminate partially within said first
opening and spaced from each other;
at least a first, removable light strip formed from a
plurality of light emitting diodes each electrically
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 4 Filed: 06/30/2021
4 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
connected in parallel and physically disposed adja-
cent one another in series, and encased within a
protective member, said first light strip cradled en-
tirely within said first elongated inset channel be-
tween said backwall and said inset channel
sidewalls and retained therein solely by said termi-
nating ends of said upper and lower sidewalls;
a first electrical cable connected to said plurality of
light emitting diodes; and
an electronic connector electrically releas[]ably
connected to said housing power supply and said
first electrical cable;
wherein said first light strip is remov[]ably re-
tained within said first elongated inset channel
with said plurality of light emitting diodes aligned
towards said first opening such that light from said
plurality of light emitting diodes enumerates
through said first opening between the terminating
ends when said plurality of diodes are powered
from said power supply.
’125 patent (Reexamination Cert.), col. 1, lines 21–63 (em-
phasis added).
The ’200 patent’s independent claim 1 is closely related
but, as relevant here, claims the fins (at the surface-chan-
nel corners) as terminating ends of the channel sidewalls,
not as terminating ends of the arm-surface sidewalls:
1. A vehicle barrier system comprising:
a gate arm formed from a single piece of material
that is generally circular shaped having a distal
end and a proximal end defining a longitudinal axis
therebetween, said proximal end coupled to a hous-
ing having a control system and a power supply to
selectively pivot said gate arm between a horizon-
tal position and a vertical position, said gate arm
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GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC 5
including a first elongated inset channel
formed along said longitudinal axis of said
circular shaped member, said first elongated
inset channel having a first opening formed
by a first pair of inset channel sidewalls inte-
grally joined to a first channel backwall, said
inset channel walls including a first upper
terminating end and a first lower terminating
end, said ends terminate partially within said
first opening and spaced from each other;
a first light strip formed from a plurality of light
emitting diodes each electrically connected in par-
allel and physically disposed adjacent one another
in series, and encased within a protective member,
said first light strip cradled entirely within said
first elongated inset channel between said back-
wall and said inset channel sidewalls and retained
therein solely by said first upper and said first
lower terminating ends;
a first electrical cable connected to said plurality of
light emitting diodes; and
an electronic connector electrically releas[]ably
connected to said power supply and said first elec-
trical cable;
wherein said first light strip is positioned within
said first elongated inset channel with said plural-
ity of light emitting diodes aligned towards said
first opening such that light from said plurality of
light emitting diodes enumerates through said first
opening between the terminating ends when said
plurality of diodes are powered from said power
supply.
’200 patent, col. 12, lines 26–60 (emphasis added).
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 6 Filed: 06/30/2021
6 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
B
GateArm sued Access Masters on November 26, 2014,
for infringement of the ’125 patent, and it later amended
the complaint to assert infringement of the ’125 patent’s
claims as modified on reexamination and of the ’200 pa-
tent’s claims as well. The parties entered into a Settlement
Agreement on March 11, 2016. J.A. 1611–15. In the Agree-
ment, Access Masters acknowledged the validity of the pa-
tents and agreed that, five months from entry of a consent
decree, it would cease marketing and selling the accused
product and “any other product that infringes a valid and
enforceable claim” of the two patents. J.A. 1611, ¶ 1. The
Agreement also states, in a provision that quotes only the
’125 patent’s claim 1, that Access Masters “may re-design
the Accused Product” to omit certain features recited by
that claim and thereby avoid infringement of both patents.
J.A. 1612, ¶ 4.
Based on the Settlement Agreement, the district court
entered a consent decree on March 29, 2016. The decree
states that Access Masters is “permanently enjoined and
restrained from manufacturing, advertising, marketing,
distributing, selling, offering to sell, importing or exporting
the accused ‘LED Arm for a Gate’ or any vehicle barrier
system . . . that would infringe any valid and enforceable
claim” of the ’125 or ’200 patents. Consent Decree, ¶ 1; J.A.
152, ¶ 1.
Shortly after entry of the decree, Access Masters rede-
signed its gate arm product. In late 2016, GateArm moved
to reopen the case, asking the court to find Access Masters
in contempt for marketing and selling the modified gate
arm product and to enjoin such sales. On April 3, 2017, the
district court referred the case to a magistrate judge, who
construed disputed limitations of the ’125 patent. J.A. 6;
see also Gatearm Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters, LLC, No.
0:14-cv-62697, 2018 WL 2329164, at *1 (S.D. Fla. May 23,
2018); Order, GateArm Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters LLC,
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 7 Filed: 06/30/2021
GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC 7
No. 0:14-cv-62697 (S.D. Fla. June 8, 2018), ECF No. 101.
The magistrate judge also held a two-day evidentiary hear-
ing, at which the parties presented expert testimony, and
received additional evidence after the hearing. The pro-
ceedings focused on the fact that, in Access Masters’s mod-
ified product, the light-strip-retaining “fins” were no longer
located at the corners of the arm surface and channel side-
walls, but had been moved along the channel sidewalls to-
ward the channel backwall.
On April 30, 2020, the magistrate judge issued a report
and recommendation, advising against finding contempt.
See Gatearm Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters, LLC, No. 0:14-
cv-62697, 2020 WL 6808670 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 30, 2020) (Re-
port and Recommendation). The magistrate applied the
contempt standards set forth in TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar
Corp., 646 F.3d 869 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (en banc). She found
that GateArm had not proved the newly accused product to
be “no more than colorably different” from the originally
accused product, see Report and Recommendation, 2020
WL 6808670, at *16, and that Access Masters’s newly ac-
cused product does not infringe, concluding that it does not
have the “terminating ends” of the “sidewalls” required by
the claims of the ’125 patent, see id. at *17. The district
court agreed with the magistrate judge, adopting the rec-
ommendation on August 21, 2020. See District Court Or-
der, 2020 WL 4923637, at *1.
GateArm timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
II
Applying Eleventh Circuit law, we review a district
court’s ultimate determination of contempt for an abuse of
discretion. See In re Managed Care, 756 F.3d 1222, 1232
(11th Cir. 2014); Baden Sports, Inc. v. Molten USA, Inc.,
556 F.3d 1300, 1304 (Fed. Cir. 2009). “‘When employing an
abuse-of-discretion standard, we must affirm unless we
find that the district court has made a clear error of
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 8 Filed: 06/30/2021
8 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
judgment, or has applied the wrong legal standard.” Man-
aged Care, 756 F.3d at 1232 (quoting United States v. Fra-
zier, 387 F.3d 1244, 1259 (11th Cir. 2004) (cleaned up)).
A
GateArm argues that the district court did not conduct
the legally required review of the magistrate judge’s dis-
puted findings in reaching its decision to deny GateArm’s
motion for contempt. GateArm Opening Br. at 23–30, 53–
60. We see no error in the district court’s review that would
warrant disturbing the result.
When a party objects to portions of a magistrate judge’s
report and recommendation, the district court must con-
duct a de novo review of the recommendation. See Jeffrey
S. v. State Bd. of Educ. of State of Ga., 896 F.2d 507, 512
(11th Cir. 1990). In this instance, it is sufficient that we
are confident that the district court correctly applied the
law to the facts and conducted the required review as to the
dispositive issue discussed infra. “We assume that the dis-
trict court performed its review function properly in the ab-
sence of evidence to the contrary.” Holt v. Crist, 233 F.
App’x 900, 901 (11th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks
omitted). The order itself indicates that the district court
properly considered both the factual and legal determina-
tions of the report and recommendation. See District Court
Order, 2020 WL 4923637, at *3 (discussing the statement
of facts in light of GateArm’s objections). And as discussed
next, the district court did not overlook anything material
to the result. 1
1 We see no basis for upsetting the district court’s
implicit conclusion that it would consider the expert opin-
ion of Access Masters’s expert, Dr. Tipton, who testified
about whether the newly accused product infringed the
’125 and ’200 patents. See Crawford v. ITW Food Equip.
Grp., LLC, 977 F.3d 1331, 1339 (11th Cir. 2020) (deeming
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GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC 9
B
GateArm also challenges on the merits the finding that
it did not establish contempt. GateArm Opening Br. at 30–
53. We reject this challenge.
The consent decree prohibits Access Masters from
making, selling, and related activities involving a gate arm
that “would infringe any valid and enforceable claim of” the
’125 patent or the ’200 patent. J.A. 152, ¶ 1. To support a
finding of contempt, GateArm had to “prove both that the
newly accused product is not more than colorably different
from the product found to infringe and that the newly ac-
cused product actually infringes” either or both of the pa-
tents. TiVo, 646 F.3d at 882. GateArm bore “the burden
of proving violation of the injunction by clear and convinc-
ing evidence, a burden that applies to both infringement
and colorable differences.” Id. at 883. GateArm’s infringe-
ment case was entirely one of literal infringement; Ga-
teArm did not present a case of infringement under the
doctrine of equivalents.
We conclude that the district court did not abuse its
discretion, in that it did not clearly err, in finding insuffi-
cient proof of literal infringement. For the ’125 patent, the
magistrate judge found that “the fins or lips in [the newly
accused product are] part of the channel rather than part
of the upper and lower side walls [of the gate arm] as in
[the previous product].” Report and Recommendation,
2020 WL 6808670, at *17. That finding precludes the “fins”
or “lips” from being the “terminating end” of the gate arm
“sidewall” as required by the asserted claims of the ’125
testimony admissible when “it seems to us that most of the
issues [defendant] raises with [the expert’s] testimony are
objections going to the weight of his testimony regarding
his alternative design, and not objections to its admissibil-
ity”).
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10 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
patent. The district court did not err in adopting that find-
ing of fact, and that finding suffices to reject GateArm’s ar-
gument for contempt of the consent decree regarding the
’125 patent.
For the ’200 patent, GateArm also failed to meet its
contempt-proceeding burden to show literal infringement.
GateArm criticizes the magistrate judge and district court
for not discussing the ’200 patent more explicitly than they
did when analyzing the merits of the contempt charge. But
the limited nature of the judicial discussion of the ’200 pa-
tent reflects the deficiency of GateArm’s own case for in-
fringement based separately on the ’200 patent. GateArm
has not shown harmful error, if any error, in the finding of
no infringement before us.
GateArm’s motion to reopen focused on the claim lan-
guage of the ’125 patent. See Motion to Re-Open, GateArm
Techs., Inc. v. Access Masters LLC, No. 0:14-cv-62697 (S.D.
Fla. Nov. 15, 2016), ECF No. 56. That focus is not surpris-
ing, given paragraph 4 of the parties’ Settlement Agree-
ment. In that paragraph, after quoting language from the
’125 patent’s claim 1 (as modified on reexamination), with
no separate quotation from the ’200 patent’s claim lan-
guage, the Agreement declares that “a re-designed product
lacking this claim limitation shall not infringe the Patents-
in-Suit,” i.e., both patents. J.A. 1612. 2 The parties also
2 “4. The Parties acknowledge that [Access Masters]
may re-design the Accused Product by not including a ‘first
upper sidewall including a terminating end and first lower
sidewall including a terminating end which ends [] par-
tially within [a] first opening and spaced from each other
. . . [and] a first light strip . . . cradled entirely within [a]
first elongate inset channel . . . and retained therein solely
by said terminating ends of said upper and lower side
walls,’ as claimed in the Patents-in-Suit, and that a re-de-
signed product lacking this claim limitation shall not
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GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC 11
focused on and agreed to construe only the language of the
’125 patent’s claims, despite initially briefing limitations
from both patents. See District Court Order, 2020 WL
4923637, at *2 (“The parties agreed with [the magistrate
judge’s] assessment that only two particular phrases ap-
pearing in Claims 1, 2, and 3 of the ’125 patent require con-
struction. . . .”). Moreover, as the district court noted, the
testimony of GateArm’s expert, Dr. Rice, treated the two
patents together and did not meaningfully differentiate be-
tween them. See id. at *3; see also J.A. 2258 (Tr. 79:15–20)
(Dr. Rice testimony discussing “both the [’]125 and [’]200
patent”).
GateArm did not present evidence essential to proving
literal infringement of the ’200 patent in this contempt pro-
ceeding. Indeed, it failed to map each claim limitation onto
the newly accused product. See Ericsson, Inc. v. D-Link
Systems, Inc., 773 F.3d 1201, 1215 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“[T]he
patentee must show that the accused device contains each
and every limitation of the asserted claims.”). In particu-
lar, it did not present the evidence needed for literal in-
fringement that the accused modified product’s fins
(required to retain the light strip), if they were part of the
channel sidewalls (as the magistrate judge and district
court found), were actually the “terminating ends” of those
sidewalls (as the ’200 patent claims require). Access Mas-
ters’s expert asserted that they were not. See J.A. 1054–
55, 2378 (Tr. 179). GateArm has not shown that this record
would support a finding of literal infringement of the as-
serted claims of the ’200 patent under the heightened bur-
den of proof applicable to contempt proceedings. See
Creative Compounds, LLC v. Starmark Labs., 651 F.3d
infringe the Patents-in-Suit or constitute a violation of the
Consent Decree or this Agreement.” J.A. 1612 (first and
second alterations added); see also J.A. 1611 (defining “Pa-
tents-in-Suit” to be the ’125 patent and the ’200 patent).
Case: 20-2313 Document: 33 Page: 12 Filed: 06/30/2021
12 GATEARM TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. ACCESS MASTERS, LLC
1303, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (“If the patentee fails to meet
that burden [for infringement], the patentee loses regard-
less of whether the accused comes forward with any evi-
dence to the contrary.”). We do not address infringement
under the doctrine of equivalents, which GateArm did not
press in this matter, and we do not decide whether Ga-
teArm could show infringement under the preponderance-
of-the-evidence standard applicable outside the context of
contempt proceedings. See Centricut, LLC v. Esab Grp.,
Inc., 390 F.3d 1361, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
III
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s
decision.
The parties shall bear their own costs.
AFFIRMED