Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> FileWrapper

Intellectual Property Law

: FileWrapper

Claim construction and noninfringement affirmed on one patent, vacated on another

By McKee, Voorhees & Sease, P.L.C.

In a decision last week, the Federal Circuit vacated a district court's grant of summary judgment of noninfringement of one patent and affirmed summary judgment of noninfringement of another.  The determinations turned on the construction of one claim element in each patent.

In the first patent, the court held that there was sufficient disclosure in the specification to permit the broader construction of the critical term advanced by the patentee.  Judge Lourie dissented from this portion of the opinion, and would have affirmed the district court's construction and, therefore, its summary judgment of noninfringement.

For the second patent, although the only embodiment disclosed in the specification was outside the scope of the district court's construction, nevertheless the court affirmed the construction as it was clear from the claim language, as well as supported by the prosecution history.  As a result, this was a case where there was "highly persuasive evidentiary support" for a construction that excluded the preferred embodiment.
 
More detail of Lucent Techs., Inc. v. Gateway, Inc. after the jump.

[More]

Full post as published by FileWrapper on May 13, 2008 (boomark / email).