(Informal 1-2 line summaries, which certainly should not be relied upon for legal or other research purposes)
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- I've had attorney's denigrate my admiration for Sister Miriam-Joseph and the ancient grammatical arts. In the future, I'll refer them to this brief contract interpretation opinion, reading in the effect of an Oxford comma.
"The disputed statement recites
the following:
Applicant understands and agrees to Samsung
Semiconductor, Inc.’s terms of sale (attached), to
pay service charges assessed (comma where are you?) and to pay reasonable
attorneys [sic] fees in the event of default." (snark added)
Appellant seeks a creative reading:
"Finelite contends, primarily using grammar principles,
that the disputed statement incorporated only two aspects
of the terms of sale on pages 4 and 5. Under its view, it
breaks the sentence into two parts. It interprets the first
part—“Applicant understands and agrees to Samsung
Semiconductor, Inc.’s terms of sale (attached)”—as the
main clause . . . It then contends that
the second half—“to pay service charges assessed and to
pay reasonable attorneys [sic] fees in the event of default”—is a limitation on the main clause and specifically
limits the incorporation of the “terms of sale” to only those
sections on pages 4 and 5 relating to “service charges” and
“attorneys [sic] fees.” Id. This is an incorrect reading of
the 2012 Agreement . . . The disputed
statement is best read as a list or series of obligations, not
a grant followed by limitations. Notwithstanding the omission of the Oxford comma . . . the comma placement and use of “and” in the disputed statement reflect a series in which Finelite agreed to multiple
items, including all “terms of sale” . . . [Furthermore] Finelite’s interpretation must also be rejected because
it would impermissibly render substantial portions of the
2012 Agreement superfluous."
Ergo, affirmed.
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- This is another precedential range claim construction opinion.
"The district court found no literal infringement, concluding, as most relevant here, that the
claim term “a pH of 13 or higher” refers to a pH measured
at a temperature standard in the field. The district court
further ruled that Actelion was barred from asserting, and
had not proved, infringement by an equivalent. "
Here,
"Actelion argues that the district court’s standard-temperature construction of the claim phrase “formed from a
bulk solution having a pH of 13 or higher” is incorrect . . . The claim language, standing alone, does not resolve
the question of the proper interpretation of “a pH of 13 or
higher” . . . The specification favors the district court’s construction over
Actelion’s. The specification never states outright the conditions of any of the (many) pH measurements reported in
its examples . . . The contrary evidence marshalled by Actelion does not
leave us with a definite and firm conviction that the district
court made a mistake . . . evidence does not actually contradict the district court’s finding—that a statement of a pH
value in the art is understood to refer to standard-temperature measurements “unless otherwise specified,” thus recognizing that a particular statement might specify
otherwise . . . Actelion’s cited evidence merely shows
instances of such specification; none of it says that a pH
value without identification of a temperature should be assumed to mean anything other than a pH measured at
standard temperature."
Ergo, after briefly likewise affirming the loss of DoE:
"We thus agree with the district court that
Actelion failed to show that the claim amendment is only
tangential to the differences between the alleged equivalent and the literal claim scope, and we conclude that
Actelion is estopped from asserting the doctrine of equivalents here . . . The disclosure-dedication rule independently bars
Actelion’s theory of infringement by an equivalent"
i.e., ("“[W]hen a patent drafter discloses but declines to claim
subject matter,” the patentee “dedicates that unclaimed
subject matter to the public” and cannot recapture it as an
equivalent."), CAFC then affirms as to the whole.
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- The CAFC majority clarifies secondary considerations analysis, emphasizing (and affirming) the absence of nexus when the target product has value extending beyond the claims:
"Relying on testimony from Metrom’s CEO, the Board
found that the AURA CAS product had unclaimed “important features or components,” including “key machine
function monitoring and remote data reporting,” that were
“not insignificant.” J.A. 27–28 (emphasis in original)."
In contrast, the CAFC majority reverses the Board's not unpatentable findings as to Claims 17-20, believing petitioner implicitly raised elements of the correspondence in their reply:
"The dissent argues that the petitioners did not argue
before the Board that “any pulses whose timing is used for
calculating separation distance (even when the signals encode nothing, much less separation distance) constitute
‘data representing the separation distance’ as a matter of
claim construction” . . .
But the issue was raised, even though it was not designated as a matter of claim construction. The petitioners
elaborated in their reply on the impulse radio signal theory
articulated in the petition, which clearly argued that the
“data representing the separation distance” is the data
used in the time-of-flight technique. The reply stated “[t]he
only way distance information is displayed [in Grisham] is
if data representing the separation distance is communicated over the air. . . . The exact details about how this separation distance is determined from the impulse radio
signal (via the time of flight technique) was described with
respect to [17G] (where Mr. Andrews refers back to [1J]).”
. . . Faulting petitioners for not raising claim
construction seems unfair because it was Metrom in its
sur-reply and the Board in its final written decision that
adopted the implied and incorrect claim construction."
Judge Taranto dissents on the latter issue:
"Siemens did not present or develop this construction in
challenging the Board’s ruling on claims 17–20 in this
court; indeed, it did not present a claim-construction argument at all, but only an argument that the Board misread
the prior-art reference, Grisham . . . The Board found that Grisham does not teach Claim 17
for a simple reason . . . What is missing in Grisham, the Board ruled, is what
element 17C requires—that the first vehicle’s “communications antenna” is “operable to send and receive data representing the separation distance over the air” (17C
(emphasis added)) . . . when Siemens and its expert asserted that
Figure 22 teaches element 17C, they never stated that the
first four steps (transmission and receipt of impulse radio
signals) themselves constituted the over-the-air transmission and receipt of data representing the separation distance simply because the signals’ timing is used to
calculate a distance (by a time-of-flight method that does
not rely on any encoding of information in the signals at
all). That simple point is what Siemens would have made
had it been advancing the claim construction adopted by
the court today. It did not do so. Instead, for its contention
that Grisham disclosed 17C, Siemens relied, at the petition
stage and also at the reply stage, on certain arguments
keyed to the reference in the last step to “distance” (2212,
referring to display of “direction, speed, and distance”).
That reliance was wholly unnecessary if bare use of the
timing of pulse signals for a distance calculation is enough
as a matter of claim construction."
Overly-generous handholding by the majority? I'll let you decide.
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- A reminder that attorneys fees for voluntarily pursued IPRs often won't be awarded:
"In Dragon . . . [t]he accused
infringer then moved for attorney fees incurred during the
IPR proceeding, arguing that the IPR was “part and parcel”
of the district court litigation such that attorney fees and
costs were recoverable under § 285 . . . We
rejected that argument, stating that the accused infringer
strategically pursued the IPR proceeding in lieu of
litigating invalidity before the district court. Id. In doing so, we highlighted the voluntary nature of the IPR
proceeding."
Ergo affirmed.
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- In this precedential decision, "Bissell appeals the Commission’s findings that Tineco’s
redesigned accused products do not meet the limitation
“wherein the battery charging circuit is disabled by the actuation of the self-cleaning mode input control and remains
disabled during the unattended automatic cleanout cycle”
either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents." CAFC affirms, and for precedential purposes, holds that:
"Here, there is no dispute that (1) Bissell’s source code
was produced in discovery, (2) Bissell’s expert relied on his
review of the source code to conclude that Bissell’s domestic
industry products satisfied the disabled battery limitation,
(3) experts in this field would reasonably rely on source
code to understand the operation of the domestic industry
products, and (4) Tineco never provided expert opinions or
theories contrary to Dr. Sorensen’s opinions on the issue.
Indeed, in its prehearing brief, Tineco did not even assert that Bissell’s domestic industry products did not practice
the disabled battery limitation . . . Under the circumstances presented in this case, we
hold that an expert can rely on source code without a party
introducing that source code into the evidentiary record at
trial."
Probably best to still stick to typical evidentiary submission standards.
James Skelley is a solo practitioner based in Mountain View, California since 2015, focusing primarily upon technology transactions and intellectual property procurement. James' practice also serves as an "incubator" for new legal service technologies / methodologies and a "living example" of their application. To this end, James regularly partners with larger law firms and with his clients so as to improve the practice of intellectual property law.
- Utility / Design / PCT Patent Prosecution
- Open Source Diligence
- Technology Transactions (typically as a team)
- Litigation / Inter Partes Review Support (typically as a team)
- James tends NOT to handle low-volume trademark work (though referrals are available)
- USPTO - #59458 - 10/16/2006
- California - #257829 - 12/01/2008
- District Columbia - #1014986 - 08/05/2013
- James is available by email, 8x8 hangout, and in-person meetups in the Valley.
- Email is typically the best way to reach James.
- Machine Learning / Robotics
- Cryptograpy / Cryptocurrency / Smart Contracts
- Medical Device
- Computational Biology (primarily modeling and proteomics)
- Signal Processing (primarily wireless and compression)
- Quantum Physics (primarily semiconductor) / Electromagnetics (antennae, waveguides, etc.)
- Manufacturing / 3D Printing
- James tends NOT to handle pure chemistry applications (though referrals are available), however James HAS handled matters involving computational proteomics, cellular modeling, and diagnostic lab protocols
LawMux Bites are (very) short, one-page summaries of various legal concepts, cases, and technologies. As informal summaries, you certainly shouldn't rely upon them as legal advice / for business use, but they can help orient you if you're new to the subject matter.