{"id":137,"date":"2014-08-22T11:53:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T15:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=137"},"modified":"2014-08-24T12:12:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T16:12:31","slug":"out-of-order-the-order-of-steps-in-a-method-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=137","title":{"rendered":"Out of Order: The Order of Steps in a Method Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Mformation Technologies, Inc. v, Research in Motion Limited<\/em>,\u00a0[2012-1679, 2013-1123] (Fed. Cir.\u00a02014), the Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of JMOL because it agreed that the\u00a0order of the steps was important to infringement.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit noted the general rule that\u00a0\u201c[u]nless the steps of a method [claim] actually recite an order, the steps are not ordinarily construed to require one.\u201d <i>Interactive Gift Express, Inc. v. Compuserve Inc<\/i>., 256 F.3d 1323, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).\u00a0 However, the Federal Circuit went on to explained that a claim \u201crequires an ordering of steps when the claim language, as a matter of logic or grammar, requires that the steps be performed in the order written, or the specification directly or implicitly requires\u201d an order of steps. <i>TALtech Ltd. v. Esquel Apparel, Inc.<\/i>, 279 F. App\u2019x 974, 978 (Fed. Cir. 2008); <i>see also Function Media, LLC v. <\/i><i>Google, Inc.<\/i>, 708 F.3d 1310, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (concluding that a claim that recites \u201cprocessing\u201d an \u201celectronic advertisement\u201d necessarily indicates that \u201cthe creation of the ad must happen before the processing begins\u201d).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The order of the steps in a method claim is in the control of the claim drafter:\u00a0 if the order of steps is not important, then the draft should make sure the words chosen don&#8217;t imply an order as a matter of &#8220;logic or grammar.&#8221;\u00a0 Numbering or lettering the steps can also imply an order, and should be used judiciously.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Mformation Technologies, Inc. v, Research in Motion Limited,\u00a0[2012-1679, 2013-1123] (Fed. Cir.\u00a02014), the Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of JMOL because it agreed that the\u00a0order of the steps was important to infringement.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit noted the general rule that\u00a0\u201c[u]nless &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=137\">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":[8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-claim-construction","category-drafting-tips"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","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=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}