Patent Law Weblog
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Category: Definiteness
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By Michael Borella — Mastermine brought a patent infringement action against Microsoft in the District of Minnesota. At issue were four claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,945,850 and three claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,429,518. After claim construction and indefiniteness rulings came down unfavorably for Mastermine, the parties agreed to a stipulated judgment of non-infringement and…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Patent law can be apparently inconsistent, particularly where claim construction is concerned. For example, claim construction standards that apply in district court are not the same standards that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office applies during examination; the rationale for the difference is a mixture of a patent having a presumption…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — From the nadir of the Supreme Court's allegations that the Federal Circuit "fundamentally misunderstood" the law of inducing infringement in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., the nation's specialized patent appellate court has crafted a two-prong test for assessing when the actions of more than a single actor amount…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit recently affirmed a district court's claim construction and determination that claim terms were not indefinite in Massachusetts Institute of Technology v. Shire Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The case involved U.S. Patent Nos. 5,770,193 and 5,759,830, directed to three-dimensional scaffolds for growing cells in vitro for in vivo organ culture. …
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By Kevin E. Noonan — In parallel, nonprecedential decisions regarding litigation over the same patent, the Federal Circuit affirmed a District Court decision that the claims were invalid for indefiniteness under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b). This decision, expressly applying the Supreme Court's revision to how courts apply the indefiniteness test in Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments,…
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By Joseph Herndon — On February 10, 2016, the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential opinion in a case captioned Driessen v. Sony Music Entertainment, Best Buy Stores, Fye, & Target Corp. addressing issues related to means-plus-function claims and written description. While the decision is nonprecedential, it serves as a reminder to provide detailed descriptions of…
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By Donald Zuhn — After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its ninth annual list of top patent stories. For 2015, we identified twenty stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) the greatest impact on patent practitioners and…
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Broad Claim Terms and Inadequate Support in Specification Render Patent Invalid By Joseph Herndon — In Media Rights Technologies, Inc. v. Capital One Financial Corp. (September 4, 2015), the Federal Circuit first transformed a broadly described element in a claim into a means-plus-function claim term, and then found the disclosure to be inadequate for the…
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By David Grosby and Michael Borella — On September 23, 2010, Eon filed suit against seventeen defendants in the District Court of the District of Delaware, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 5,663,757. During the case, the '757 patent went through two reexaminations. The claims were amended in the first reexamination, and then confirmed valid as…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit considered the question of indefiniteness on remand from the Supreme Court's reversal in Nautilus v. Biosig and, perhaps not surprisingly, found again that the Biosig's claims were not indefinite. To recap, this case involves claims to heart rate monitors on exercise equipment that determine heart rate by…
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