{"id":1976,"date":"2018-03-19T23:09:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T03:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2018-03-25T10:26:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T14:26:30","slug":"bri-you-keep-using-that-word-we-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1976","title":{"rendered":"“BRI.” You Keep Using That Word. We Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means."},"content":{"rendered":"

In In re: Power Integrations, Inc.<\/a>, [2017-1304] (March 19, 2018), the Federal Circuit reversed the decision on remand that\u00a0claims 1, 17, 18, and 19 of U.S.\u00a0Patent No. 6,249,876 were anticipated, because the Board relied upon an unreasonably broad claim construction.\u00a0\u00a0The patent describes a technique for reducing electromagnetic\u00a0interference (\u201cEMI\u201d) noise \u201cby jittering the\u00a0switching frequency of a switched mode power supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Board affirmed the examiner\u2019s rejection of the\u00a0claims as anticipated in light of its\u00a0construction of the term \u201ccoupled\u201d that was broad enough to encompass an\u00a0EPROM between the counter and the digital to analog
\nconverter.\u00a0\u00a0The Federal Circuit noted that the patent had been previously litigated, and the claims were found to be not obvious or anticipated.\u00a0\u00a0When the case was previously before it, the Federal Circuit remanded, finding that the Board had an obligation to evaluate\u00a0the construction from the litigation to determine whether it was consistent
\nwith the broadest reasonable construction of the\u00a0term.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit noted that on remand the Board acknowledged that the Federal Circuit’s\u00a0\u201cconcern\u201d that its original decision had\u00a0failed to assess whether the district court\u2019s interpretation\u00a0of the term \u201ccoupled\u201d was consistent with the broadest\u00a0reasonable construction, but the Board concluded that such a comparison was “unwarranted.”\u00a0\u00a0The Federal Circuit said that the Board adhered to\u00a0a generalist dictionary definition of the term\u201ccoupled,” and could glean no substantial guidance from either the context of\u00a0the claim itself or the specification.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit said that\u00a0even under the broadest reasonable
\nconstruction rubric the Board must always\u00a0consider the claims in light of the specification and\u00a0teachings in the underlying patent, and\u00a0that there was no reason why this construction could not coincide with that
\nof a court in litigation.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit added that while the broadest reasonable interpretation standard\u00a0is broad, it does not give the Board an unfettered\u00a0license to interpret the words in a claim without regard\u00a0for the full claim language and the written description.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit found that the board\u2019s claim construction here was\u00a0unreasonably broad and improperly omitted any consideration\u00a0of the disclosure in the specification.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit explained\u00a0under the board\u2019s overly expansive view of the term\u00a0\u201ccoupled,\u201d every element anywhere in the same circuit is
\npotentially \u201ccoupled\u201d to every other element in that circuit,\u00a0no matter how far apart they are, how many intervening\u00a0components are between them, or whether they\u00a0are connected in series or in parallel.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit pointed out that\u00a0the\u00a0correct inquiry in giving a claim term its broadest reasonable\u00a0interpretation in light of the specification is not\u00a0whether the specification proscribes or precludes some\u00a0broad reading of the claim term adopted by the examiner.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit noted that the board has had two opportunities to come up with\u00a0a sustainable interpretation that differs from the one that
\nsurvived litigation and has failed, and concluded there was not one.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit thus reversed the Board without remand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In In re: Power Integrations, Inc., [2017-1304] (March 19, 2018), the Federal Circuit reversed the decision on remand that\u00a0claims 1, 17, 18, and 19 of U.S.\u00a0Patent No. 6,249,876 were anticipated, because the Board relied upon an unreasonably broad claim construction.\u00a0\u00a0The … 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":[22,7,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bri","category-claim-constructino","category-reexamination"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","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=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1977,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/1977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}