K-fee’s Patent Suit Against Nespresso Revived by Fed. Circuit

The Federal Circuit breathed new life into a German single-serve coffee machine maker’s patent suit against Nespresso USA Inc.

K-fee System GmbH sued the Nestle SA unit in April 2021, alleging pods manufactured for Nespresso’s Vertuo line of coffee machines infringed three of its patents covering a barcode system for coffee capsules. The suit was tossed by the US District Court for the Central District of California, which ruled the Vertuo products didn’t copy the patents under its interpretation of the term “barcode.”

The lower court, however, interpreted the word too narrowly, according to the US Court of Appeals for ...