"Most of the time utility patent claim construction is based upon the intrinsic record—a clean construction of legal documents . . . The opposite is true in design patent claim construction. Nearly every single design patent case turns upon the factual issue of functionality—which dictates how the design should be compared to the prior art and the accused design . . . . Almost nothing in the way of legal analysis undergirds the claim construction of a picture . . . The concurrence points out other considerations it contends bear on the scope of design patent claims, including the role of broken lines in design patent drafting and the effect of representations made during prosecution . . . There is no reason—and the concurrence provides none—why considerations like these, which can be addressed with a simple jury instruction, otherwise require taking substantially the entire infringement question away from the jury."

"[W]e hold that the representative claims of the Asserted Patents are directed to an abstract idea of “generating and sharing self-contained, interactive charts on computers” or “across websites” . . . he district court stated that “even surpassing plausibility to assume Adobe Flash was not conventionally used, the claim language [of claim 1 of the ’892 patent] does not limit this claim to using Adobe Flash or to any mechanism by which its ideas are accomplished.” J.A. 14. And like the district court correctly concluded, this failure by the claims was “fatal” to iChart’s step-two position . . . we conclude that at Alice step two, there is nothing in the representative claims of the Asserted Patents sufficient to transform them into eligible subject matter."

"[T]he Board held that, for purposes of AIA § 102(d)(2), a reference patent receives the filing date of an earlier application as long as it satisfies the “ministerial requirements” of §§ 119 and 120 and the earlier application “describes the subject matter relied upon in the reference patent.” Because the Board found that Carrier’s provisional application described the subject matter on which the petition relied, it concluded that Carrier qualified as prior art as of the provisional application’s filing date."

"Section 102(d) therefore incorporates that substantive requirement, and there is nothing in its text that exempts prior art determinations from § 119(e)(1)’s entitlement requirements or otherwise creates a different, less demanding “ministerial” standard for prior art purposes . . . Congress chose language requiring the satisfaction of statutory-based substantive requirements, not language merely permitting an applicant to invoke priority . . . the statutory text requires § 112(a) support for at least one of the prior art patent’s published claims before that reference may obtain an earlier filing date for prior art purposes." (emphasis added)

"We strongly disfavor construing “terms in a way that renders them void, meaningless, or superfluous” . . . Because claim 1 provides that the string guides are both “mounted to” and “rotatable,” Ravin’s proposed construction would render the claimed “rotatable around a first axis” and “rotatable around a second axis” limitations superfluous . . . Similarly, the written description does not limit the “mounted to” connection to allow only rotational movement but repeatedly describes the string guides, “mounted to” the limbs, are “rotatable” . . . We see no error in the Board’s construction of “mounted to” to mean “connected to, either directly or indirectly,” and Ravin poses no separate challenge to the Board’s anticipation finding under this construction. We therefore affirm the unpatentability of claim 1 of the ’015 patent."

"[The Board] found, based on a fully developed record, that “level of physical fitness” may be conveyed through physical characteristics, such as stride length and body weight, when such characteristics are viewed in relation to one another . . . we must reject Nike’s argument that certain physical characteristics cannot be included in evaluating a “level of physical fitness.” As the Board noted, the claim’s “broad phrasing” suggests “level of physical fitness” should not be limited, and the ’413 patent specification does not further cabin the term . . . Substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Amano anticipates limitation."