{"id":960,"date":"2016-06-06T13:36:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T17:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=960"},"modified":"2016-06-09T15:14:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T19:14:58","slug":"patent-applicants-any-you-say-can-and-will-be-used-against-you-in-a-court-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=960","title":{"rendered":"Patent Applicants: Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Indacon, Inc. v, Facebook, Inc.<\/em>, [2015-1129] (June 6, 2016), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s claim construction, leaving intact the parties stipulation of non-infringement based upon that construction.<\/p>\n

At issues was\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 6,834,276, claiming a system for replacing link terms with links. \u00a0Facebook argued that the claims of the patent required all of the link terms with links, while Indacon argued that the claims did not require replacement of all of the link\u00a0terms.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit began with the observation that “link term”\u00a0these terms had no plain or established meaning to\u00a0one of ordinary skill in the art, and as, they ordinarily
\ncannot be construed broader than the disclosure in the\u00a0specification. \u00a0The Federal Circuit then noted that the specification explains that \u201c[t]he link module
\nenables association of any selected link term with any of\u00a0the plurality of files in the selectable database.\u201d Which the Federal Circuit took to mean all of the selected link terms, and then pointed out in the specification, language that it found reinforced the idea that all of the link terms were replaced.<\/p>\n

The nail in the coffin, however, was the “additional support” the Federal Circuit found in the prosecution history, where the patent owner argued that<\/p>\n

Applicants\u2019 invention provides a user with a linking
\ncontrol panel in which the user can designate
\na specific file to be linked with every instance<\/strong> of a
\nspecified word (and any associated alias terms) in
\nthe database. After the index is generated, the
\nprogram displays every instance<\/strong> of that custom
\nterm (and its alias terms, if any) as a hyperlink to
\nthe designated file. . . . These innovations distinguish
\nApplicants\u2019 invention from [the prior art].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indacon argued that\u00a0because the references\u00a0to \u201cevery instance\u201d in the prosecution history were\u00a0not the \u201ccritical contrast that applicants were trying to\u00a0make over the cited reference,\u201d these statements cannot\u00a0form the basis for disavowal. \u00a0However the Federal Circuit did not need to make a finding of disavowal, given the fact that\u00a0the link claim terms lacked a plain\u00a0or ordinary meaning in the art, and because the specification suggested limiting the scope of these claim terms to\u00a0allowing each instance of a defined term to be identified\u00a0and displayed as a link. \u00a0Indacon’s attempts to use claim differentiation were also rejected because the claims were not otherwise identical in scope, and in any event, it “cannot enlarge the meaning of a claim beyond that
\nwhich is supported by the patent documents.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

In Indacon, Inc. v, Facebook, Inc., [2015-1129] (June 6, 2016), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s claim construction, leaving intact the parties stipulation of non-infringement based upon that construction. At issues was\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 6,834,276, claiming a system for … 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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-claim-constructino"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","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=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}