{"id":624,"date":"2016-03-10T09:48:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2016-03-22T10:13:12","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T14:13:12","slug":"look-at-the-context-sometimes-a-means-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"Look at the Context, Sometimes “A” means “A”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In In re Varma<\/em>, [2015-1502, -1667] (March 10, 2016) the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB\u2019s cancellation of claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,349,291 in two inter partes<\/em> reexamination proceedings. in one of the\u00a0proceedings, the construction of “\u201ca statistical analysis request corresponding to two or more selected investments\u201d was at issue. \u00a0The Board held that this phrases embraces a request that calls for a statistical analysis of a single investment. \u00a0The Federal Circuit noted that\u00a0the Board relied on the claims\u2019 use of \u201ccomprising\u201d as the transitional term, but found that this did not support the Board’s construction. \u00a0The Federal Circuit said that although the transitional term \u201ccomprising\u201d indicates that the claim is open-ended, the term does not render each limitation or phrase within the claim open-ended. \u00a0The Federal Circuit explained:<\/p>\n

“Comprising\u201d means that the claim can be met by a system that contains features over and above those specifically required by the claim element, but only if the system still satisfies the specific claim-element requirements: the claim does not cover systems whose unclaimed features make the claim elements no longer satisfied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit also noted that the Board cited the indefinite article \u201ca\u201d before \u201cstatistical analysis request\u201d to support its interpretation. However the Federal Circuit said that while \u201ca\u201d sometimes is non-restrictive as to number, permitting the presence of more than one of the objects\u00a0following that indefinite article, context matters even as to whether the word has that meaning. \u00a0The Federal Circuit said the\u00a0question is not whether there can be more than one request in a claim-covered system: there can. Rather, the question was whether \u201ca\u201d can serve to negate what is required by the language following \u201ca\u201d: a \u201crequest\u201d (a singular term) that \u201ccorrespond[s]\u201d to \u201ctwo or more selected investments.\u201d The Federal Circuti said that it cannot. The Federal Circuit observed “For a dog owner to have ‘a dog that rolls over and fetches sticks,’ it does not suffice that he have two dogs, each able to perform just one of the tasks.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit held that the Board applied an unreasonably broad interpretation, and remanded the applications to be reconsidered in light of the proper claim construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In In re Varma, [2015-1502, -1667] (March 10, 2016) the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB\u2019s cancellation of claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,349,291 in two inter partes reexamination proceedings. in one of the\u00a0proceedings, the construction of “\u201ca statistical analysis request … 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":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-claim-construction"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","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=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}