Posts Tagged: "ordinary plain meaning"

Is ‘Plain and Ordinary Meaning’ a Viable Proposed Claim Construction After the Federal Circuit’s Decision in Eon?

In last year’s decision in Eon Corp. IP Holdings LLC v. Silver Spring Network, Inc. 815 F.3d 1314, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit reversed the District Court’s jury instruction that the terms “portable” and “mobile” should be given their “plain and ordinary meaning.” During claim construction at the District Court, Eon argued that “portable” and “mobile” did not need construction and that the terms could simply be given their plain and ordinary meaning. Id. at 1317. Silver Springs argued that the terms ought to be construed, but the District Court agreed with Eon and found that the meanings of those terms are clear and would be readily understandable to a jury. Id. However, the Federal Circuit held that a determination that a particular term needs no construction may be inadequate when a term has more than one meaning.

BRI v. Plain and Ordinary Meaning in Claim Construction: Much Ado About Nothing?

On one hand, logic dictates that the broader the interpretation of the claim, the more extensive the array of relevant prior art—and in turn the more likely that the claim will be held invalid in light of that prior art. On the other hand, evaluating whether the Board’s use of the BRI protocol in an IPR claim construction will lead to “different results” than the plain and ordinary meaning construction used by federal courts in claim construction is complicated by the relatively scant evidence on the subject, and the inevitable fact that this evidence is naturally dependent on particular prior art and invalidity and obviousness arguments specific to a particular patent. Even putting aside the question of what impact a different claim construction standard may have in an IPR, In re Cuozzo Speed Technologies will not address several powerful differences between an IPR and district court litigation that impact whether a particular patent claim survives.

BRI in IPR may be narrower than broadest ordinary meaning, broader than Phillips standard

The Court noted that the Board failed to account for how the claims and specification inform the ordinary skilled artisan as to what ordinary definition the patentee was using. The Court noted that just because “around” has several dictionary definitions does not mean all these meanings were reasonable in light of the specification. The Court argued that all of the components of the cable connectors encircled an inner electrical conductor, and thus it would seem odd to construe “reside around” without recognizing the context of its use in terms of the cable.

Ordinary Plain Meaning: Defining Terms in a Patent Application

The question of whether a term is defined adequately is really a legal question, so the views and opinions of those who are not well versed in the law are hardly probative. Inventors invent and patent attorneys describe those inventions to satisfy the legal requirements. If inventors could describe their inventions to meet the legal requirements they wouldn’t need patent attorneys, but we all know that inventors who represent themselves make numerous errors and always obtain far more narrow protection than they would have been entitled to receive. They just don’t understand the law well enough and are not qualified to offer opinions on matters of law.