{"id":1249,"date":"2016-10-04T13:46:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T17:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2016-10-01T14:01:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T18:01:54","slug":"if-you-cant-say-anything-nice-about-the-prior-art-dont-say-anything-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"If You Can&#8217;t Say Anything Nice About the Prior Art, Don&#8217;t Say Anything at All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that Mom was right when she said: &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say anything nice about someone, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221; \u00a0Criticism of the prior art can limit the scope of your claims. \u00a0In <em>UltimatePointer, LLC v. Nintendo Co.<\/em>, 816 F.3d 816 [118 USPQ2d 1125, 1130] (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit found that the patentee&#8217;s disparagement of indirect pointing devices supported the conclusion that such devices were not encompassed by &#8220;pointing device&#8221; in the claim. \u00a0The Federal Circuit said that &#8220;the repeated criticism of indirect pointing&#8221; clearly pointed to the conclusion that the \u201chandheld device\u201d in the claims is limited to a direct-pointing device.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson is to not disparage\u00a0any feature of the prior art that might be incorporated into a device that you would want to claim infringes your claims. \u00a0 You are free to disparage problems\u00a0of the prior art that are <em>eliminated<\/em> by the claimed invention. \u00a0However, if you disparage the prior art, and the accused infringer&#8217;s product suffers from the same problem you criticized, then the accused product may not be found to infringe your claims. \u00a0And Mom would say, &#8220;it serves you right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that Mom was right when she said: &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say anything nice about someone, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221; \u00a0Criticism of the prior art can limit the scope of your claims. \u00a0In UltimatePointer, LLC v. Nintendo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1249\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafting-tips","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","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=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1252,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions\/1252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}