Posts Tagged: "Claim Scope"

The United Stated Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently held that a district court erred in its claim construction and vacated the district court’s judgment of noninfringement, which the parties stipulated to based on the erroneous construction. See Continental Circuits LLC v. Intel Corp., No. 2018-1076, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 3920, 2019 WL 489069 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 8, 2019) (Before Lourie, Linn, and Taranto, J.) (Opinion for the court, Lourie, J.). The Court highlighted that the first step in claim construction should always be to determine the plain and ordinary meaning of the claims. Further, the specification should serve to limit the plain and ordinary meaning only when it includes a definition for a claim term or a clear disclaimer or disavowal of claim scope.

Acceleration Bay appealed the final written decisions of the Board holding claims 1-9 of U.S. Patent No. 6,829,634, claims 1-11 and 16-19 of U.S. Patent No. 6,701,344, and claims 1-11 and 16-17 of U.S. Patent No. 6,714,966 all unpatentable. Petitioners Activision Blizzard, Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 2k Sports, Inc., and Rockstar Games, Inc. (collectively, “Blizzard”) also cross-appealed portions of the Board’s decisions holding patentable claims 10-18 of the `634 patent, as well as substitute claims 19 of the `966 patent, 21 of the `344 patent, and 25 of the `634 patent. Blizzard also cross appealed the Board’s decisions holding that one particular reference — the Lin article — was not a printed publication under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a). In an opinion authored by Judge Moore and joined by Chief Judge Prost and Judge Reyna, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB decision, finding that both Acceleration Bay’s and Blizzard’s arguments were without merit.

On March 12, 2018, the Federal Circuit held in SimpleAir, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 2016-2738, that a terminal disclaimer does not raise a presumption that a continuation patent is patentably indistinct from its parent patent.  In SimpleAir, the issue was whether an action asserting infringement of two patents was barred by claim preclusion or the Kessler doctrine when the same activity had been judged not infringing in earlier litigations involving other patents in the same family, all of which were related as continuations, and all of which included terminal disclaimers to the ultimate parent patent.  The Federal Circuit held that notwithstanding the terminal disclaimers, the district court could not simply rely on a presumption that the claims were patentably indistinct, and instead must compare the scope of the claims to determine whether claim preclusion or the Kessler doctrine applies. 

When a rule becomes a target, it ceases to be a good rule.  In the three years since the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice, there have been positive changes to patent applications, but there remains a long-term risk that patent practitioners will use tricks to beat the Alice test.  Here, we focus on the changes to patent applications by drafters, as well as changes to patent applications that have issued since Alice… Previous analyses have reported that patent specification length has been increasing since long before 2010. As shown in Figure 3, from 2010 to 2013, the average patent application length was approximately 12,417 words. However, from 2015 and 2017, the average patent application length increased to over 14,700 words… Alice appears to have resulted in positive developments, such as narrowing the scope of claims and increasing disclosure of technical benefits of inventions in the specification.

The UK Supreme Court recently addressed the extent to which under the European Patent Convention 2000 (“EPC 2000”), a patentee may obtain protection against products or processes that are not covered by the literal meaning of the claims. In doing so, the UKSC modified what had been previously seen as the established approach of the UK courts towards ‘equivalents’. In particular, while not disapproving the test, the Court has chosen to reformulate the three “Improver” questions that, since 1990, have been in common usage for aiding determinations as to what might constitute patent infringement… The UKSC has concluded that subsequent to the Improver decision, which was then reinforced by the judgment in Kirin-Amgen, there has been a tendency by the UK courts to place “..too much weight on the words of the claim…” and what the patentee might have anticipated or intended. Instead, the UK courts should have focused on whether, on a basis of fact and expert evidence, the variant is a true equivalent of the invention as described in the patent.

In the case of Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding of summary judgment for Apple Inc. (“Apple”). The Court held that statements made by a patent owner during an inter partes review (“IPR”) proceeding, whether before or after an institution decision, can be relied upon to support a finding of prosecution disclaimer… To invoke prosecution disclaimer, the statements must constitute a clear and unmistakable surrender of claim scope. If a prosecution argument is subject to more than one reasonable interpretation, it cannot rise to the level of a clear and unmistakable disclaimer.