{"id":1229,"date":"2016-09-23T22:37:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T02:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2016-09-27T23:09:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T03:09:26","slug":"structural-element-does-not-make-method-claims-indefinite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"Structural Element Does Not Make Method Claims Indefinite"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sprint Communication Company LP<\/em>, [2016-1013] (September 23, 2016), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s determination that the asserted claims of\u00a0U.S. Patent Nos.\u00a06,452,932; 6,463,052; 6,633,561; 7,286,561; 6,298,064; and\u00a06,473,429 were not invalid for indefiniteness.<\/p>\n

The parties agreed\u00a0that \u201cprocessing system\u201d is not a means-plus-function
\nterm, and confined its review to\u00a0whether\u00a0\u201cprocessing system\u201d renders the asserted patents indefinite\u00a0under 35 U.S.C. \u00a7 112, \u00b6 2. \u00a0The Federal Circuit found that the claim term\u00a0\u201cprocessing\u00a0system\u201d does not prevent the claims, read in light\u00a0of the specification and the prosecution history, from\u00a0informing those skilled in the art about the scope of the\u00a0invention with reasonable certainty.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit noted that the\u00a0\u00a0case presented a peculiar scenario because the disputed term,\u00a0\u201cprocessing system,\u201d\u00a0plays no discernable role in defining the scope of the\u00a0claims. The Court noted that all of the asserted claims are method claims, and
\nthe point of novelty resides with the steps of these methods,\u00a0not with the machine that performs them. The Federal Cricuit pointed out that if the words “processing system” were removed from the claims, therein meaning would not discernably change. \u00a0The Federal Circuit reasoned that if \u201cprocessing system\u201d does not discernably alter the
\nscope of the claims, it is difficult to see how this term\u00a0would prevent the claims from serving\u00a0their notice function under \u00a7 112, \u00b6 2.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit said that the common practice of focusing on individual terms is a “helpful tool,” but ultimately indefiniteness under\u00a0\u00a7 112, \u00b6 2 must ultimately turn on whether the \u201cclaims, read in light of the\u00a0specification delineating the patent, and the prosecution\u00a0history, fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those\u00a0skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.\u201d The Federal Circuit found that\u00a0\u201cprocessing system\u201d
\ndoes not prevent the claims from doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sprint Communication Company LP, [2016-1013] (September 23, 2016), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s determination that the asserted claims of\u00a0U.S. Patent Nos.\u00a06,452,932; 6,463,052; 6,633,561; 7,286,561; 6,298,064; and\u00a06,473,429 were not invalid for indefiniteness. The parties … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indefiniteness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}