{"id":15,"date":"2013-08-05T09:36:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T13:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=15"},"modified":"2013-08-05T09:36:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T13:36:56","slug":"when-being-critical-is-critical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"When Being Critical is Critical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is well established that a patentee may limit the scope of the claims by disavowal, and one of the many ways such disavowal can occur is by criticizing the prior art.\u00a0 When a patent specification criticizes the prior art, it is presumed that the invention does not share the criticized featuers.\u00a0 Thus in Chicago Board Options Exchange, Inc., v. International Securities Exchange, LLC., (Fed. Cir. 2012) the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court&#8217;s finding of disavowal noting\u00a0that &#8220;the specification goes well beyond expressing the patentee\u2019s preference for a fully automated exchange over a manual or a partially automated one, and its repeated derogatory statements about the latter reasonably may be viewed as a disavowal of that subject matter from the scope of the Patent\u2019s claims.&#8221;\u00a0 Criticism of the prior art also limited the claims\u00a0in <em>In re Abbott Diabetes Care, Inc.<\/em>,\u00a0(Fed. Cir.\u00a02012), but this time to the applicant&#8217;s advantage.\u00a0 Abbott successfully argued that the broadest reasonable interpreation\u00a0of its\u00a0claims on appeal was at least in part limited by its criticism of the prior art.<\/p>\n<p>A patent prosecutor\u00a0should be aware of the limiting effect of criticisms of the prior art.\u00a0 Sometimes they help the applicant (Abbott), but sometimes they hurt (Chicago Board).\u00a0 Like most things in the law, an absolute rule against being critical of the prior art is not appropriate, but it must be done carefully and thoughtfully.\u00a0 Moreover, a good prosecutor will recall that the MPEP prohibits disparagement of the prior art:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/60801r.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-16\" title=\"60801(r)\" src=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/60801r-300x189.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"551\" height=\"289\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maybe Mom had the best advice for prosecutors. . . &#8220;If you can say anything nice, don&#8217;t say antyhing at all.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is well established that a patentee may limit the scope of the claims by disavowal, and one of the many ways such disavowal can occur is by criticizing the prior art.\u00a0 When a patent specification criticizes the prior art, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=15\">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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","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\/15","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=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}