Posts Tagged: "claims"

The Federal Circuit issued a decision in CardSoft v. Verifone, which the Court overturned the district court’s claim construction. Overturning a district court’s claim construction is hardly unusual, and perhaps more typical than it really should be, but that is another story for another day. What was unique about this particular case was that the Federal Circuit also went on to rule that CardSoft had waived any argument that the defendants had infringed under what they determined to ultimately be the correct claim construction.

Pilot participation requires an applicant to include a glossary section in the patent application specification to define terms used in the patent claim. Applications accepted into the pilot will get expedited processing, be placed on an examiner’s special docket prior to the first office action and have special status up to issuance of a first office action.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas construed the word “or” in clause (e) of Claim 1 to mean “a choice between either one of two alternatives, but not both.” This claim construction was significant because the accused device performed an analysis of both the strongest and fastest signals (i.e., a user could not select between a magnitude or frequency mode). Therefore, because the accused device always performed both options, the court held that it did not infringe the ‘246 patent.

On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, the House of Representatives passed two bills that are now await President Obama’s signature. The bill — S. 3486— implements both the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) and the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs. The U.S. Senate previously passed the same bill in the same form on September 22, 2012. Thus, the remaking of U.S. patent law and patent practice continues, and we will see more rulemaking coming from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Even if the BRI rule made sense in 1932—and it is not clear to me that it ever made sense—the rule no longer makes sense. Dramatic changes in the field of patents have undermined even the alleged reasons for the BRI rule. The solution to the problem of the BRI rule is to replace it with the only rule that is natural and makes sense. After 80 years of inventors suffering under the BRI rule, it is time for Congress or the Supreme Court to say: regardless of whether the patent application has been granted, the claims mean the exact same thing. Always.

It takes time to prepare a detailed written disclosure that will support any number of claims, and there is just no way to rush it. Inventors and entrepreneurs intuitively know this, but still some get lured into believing that what they get for $1,200 is just as good as what they would get if they paid $8,000, which is unrealistic of course. You should not fall for what you want to hear when you deep down know it makes no sense. If you aren’t convinced ask yourself this: When you were in school and you had to write a paper for a grade, was the resulting paper better if you spent more time or less time working on the project? The reality is the more time you have to spend the better the work product. If you are not paying very much then you realistically cannot expect the same number of hours, nor can you expect the same level of quality.

Recently, patent scholar Mark Lemley has renewed attention to software claims under 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. Lemley encourages strict application of the algorithm requirement to police software patents and resolve these concerns. Unlike Lemley, I am convinced that the algorithm requirement makes no sense. The problem is not that the concern about broad software claims is unjustified. The problem is that, even if the concern is justified, the algorithm requirement does not solve it. At least, the requirement does not solve the problem in an appropriate way.

In a nutshell, an invention would be obvious when someone knowledgable about the area would look at your invention and consider it to be already known; not exactly but rather known if one were to combine several references. In other words, the predictable and non-unique combination of what multiple references teach would yield your invention. The prototypical example is when you have invented A+B. A is known in the prior art, and B is known in the prior art. Upon looking at A and then looking at B, would someone of skill in the art consider A+B to be already known? If the answer is yes, then A+B is obvious. If the answer is no, then A+B is not obvious.