{"id":141,"date":"2014-08-22T12:42:26","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T16:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2014-08-24T20:25:06","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T00:25:06","slug":"about-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"About: about"},"content":{"rendered":"

About is one of the great weasel words of patent claim drafting.\u00a0 Few things look as dangerous to a\u00a0patent drafter as the sharp edge of a numerical limitation without the blunting influence of “about.”\u00a0 “About” has been used in the claims of about<\/strong><\/em> 22% of utility patents issuing since 1976.\u00a0 While it is frequently employed by drafters, often not much care is taken in properly defining its boundaries.\u00a0 In Ferring B.V. v. Watson Laboratories, Inc. – Florida<\/em>, [2014-1377] (Fed. Cir. 2014), the determination of infringement turned on the meaning of \u201cabout\u201d in the phrase “less than about 70%”.\u00a0 Ferring\u00a0argued that about meant +\/- 10%, based upon some language in a test referenced in the claim language, so that less than about 70% actually meant less than 63% to 77%.\u00a0 Apotex meanwhile argued that it meant\u00a0+\/- 5%, so that about 70% actually meant less than 66.5 to 73.5%, which did not encompass the less than 75% of Apotex’s product.\u00a0 In the absence of any defintion in the patent, the Federal Circuit declined to place a numerical limitation on “about,” instead giving about its ordianry meaning:<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout\u201d is not defined either explicitly or by implication by the specification. We think that the district court did not err in giving the term \u201cabout\u201d its ordinary meaning and in refusing to give it a more specific construction. See also Merck & Co., Inc. v. Teva Pharms. USA, Inc.<\/i>, 395 F.3d 1364, 1369\u201370 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (the term \u201cabout\u201d should be given its ordinary and accepted meaning of \u201capproximately\u201d unless the patentee clearly redefines \u201cabout\u201d in the specification). We affirm the district court\u2019s construction of \u201cabout\u201d to mean \u201capproximately,\u201d as well as its refusal to construe \u201cabout\u201d to represent a particular numerical error rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“About” is a often used and time honored weasel word, but to be used to best effect, some standard should be provided for determining its effect on the so-modified claim element.<\/strong>
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About is one of the great weasel words of patent claim drafting.\u00a0 Few things look as dangerous to a\u00a0patent drafter as the sharp edge of a numerical limitation without the blunting influence of “about.”\u00a0 “About” has been used in the … 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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","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=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}