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New PTAB Claim Construction? Give the Parties Review Opportunity

The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) Director vacated Final Written Decisions issued by the Patent Trial & Appeal Board that presented a sua sponte construction of a claim term in dispute, holding that the parties were not provided adequate notice of the Board’s new construction. Assa Abloy AB v. CPC Patent Technologies Pty., Ltd., IPR2022-01006, -01045, -01089 (PTAB Decision Review Mar. 15, 2024) (Vidal, PTO Dir.)

The Board issued Final Written Decisions in three inter partes reviews (IPRs), holding that the petitioner failed to demonstrate that any of the challenged claims were unpatentable. The petitioner requested Director Review, raising three issues concerning the Final Written Decisions’ treatment of the claim term “biometric signal”:

  1. The Board’s construction newly added a limitation that neither the petitioner nor the patent owner proposed
  2. The Board’s construction was erroneous
  3. The Board inconsistently addressed this claim limitation among the IPRs at issue.

The Director decided that review was appropriate.

The Director explained that in view of the petitioner’s and patent owner’s divergent post-institution positions regarding this limitation, the Board had authority to construe “biometric signal” even though its institution decisions indicated that the Board would give this claim term its plain and ordinary meaning. The petitioner argued that the term meant “the input and output of the biometric sensor,” and the patent owner argued that the term meant a “physical attribute of the user” (i.e., a fingerprint, facial pattern, iris, retina or voice). The Board held that it meant “a physical or behavioral biometric attribute that provides secure access to a controlled item.”

The Director vacated and remanded the Final Written Decisions, explaining that the Board failed to provide the petitioner and the patent owner reasonable notice of its new construction or the opportunity to present arguments concerning it, as required under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The Director noted that neither party requested the Board’s inclusion of a construction that required an attribute of the claimed signal to “provide[] secure access to a controlled item” and concluded this was the sort of “difficult to imagine” sua sponte construction that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held (in its 2021 decision in Qualcomm v. Intel) lacked sufficient notice if appearing for the first time in a Final Written Decision.

The Director instructed that on remand the Board should authorize the petitioner to file a supplemental briefing that addresses the Board’s construction and its application to the asserted prior art and authorize the patent owner to respond to the petitioner’s supplemental briefing.

The Director also noted that the patent owner’s proposed claim construction in the IPRs was similar to the construction that the Board adopted in its institution decisions in other IPRs challenging two of the patents at issue. In recognition of this situation, the Director also invited the petitioner, in its supplemental briefing, to address the perceived inconsistencies in these claim constructions.




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Be Cool: Don’t Construe the Construction

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a Patent Trial & Appeal Board decision after concluding that the patent owner’s proposed construction would require the parties to construe the construction. CoolIT Systems, Inc. v. Katherine Vidal, Director of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, Case No. 22-1221 (Fed. Cir. March 7, 2024) (Lourie, Bryson, Stark, JJ.) (nonprecedential).

CoolIT Systems owns a patent directed to a system for fluid heat transfer to cool electronic devices. The patent focuses on a heat exchange system comprising various components including a heat sink, a housing member and a compliant member. The patent claims priority from two provisional applications. Asetek Danmark petitioned for inter partes review (IPR) of the patent based on anticipation and obviousness. During the IPR proceeding, the parties disputed the meaning of the term “matingly engaged,” a term introduced in the later provisional application. To preserve validity, CoolIT argued that the term should be construed narrowly to mean “mechanically joined or fitted together to interlock.” Asetek sought a broader construction of “joined or fitted together to make contact,” which would encompass all methods of joining two surfaces.

The Board found both interpretations extreme and partially construed the term as being satisfied when at least a portion of the compliant member fits within the recessed region of the housing member. Despite agreement on the term “mate” to mean “join or fit together,” there was disagreement on the term “engage.” However, the Board did not determine whether “matingly engaged” could encompass forms of engagement beyond fitting.

The Board found that the cited prior art suggested a compliant member fitting the housing, thus rendering the claims obvious. CoolIT appealed. The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) intervened after Asetek withdrew from the appeal based on settlement.

CoolIT argued that the Board’s interpretation was flawed, and that the prior art did not meet the requirements of the “matingly engaged” limitation irrespective of the interpretation adopted. CoolIT contended that its proposed construction aligned with the invention’s purpose and properly distinguished between the 2007 and 2011 provisional applications. CoolIT also argued that the compliant member must partition features to control coolant flow, necessitating a specific type of joining or fitting.

In response, the PTO argued that CoolIT’s proposed construction read limitations from the specification into the claim. The PTO contended that neither the claims nor the specification required “interlock” and disputed CoolIT’s interpretation of the 2007 provisional application. The PTO did not propose an alternative construction, however.

The Federal Circuit concluded that “matingly engaged” should properly be construed as “mechanically joined or fitted together,” as that construction accurately reflected the term’s meaning and aligned with arguments presented by both parties. The Court rejected CoolIT’s proposal to add the word “interlock” because it would cause more confusion than clarity, noting that even CoolIT and the PTO still disagreed over what the term “interlock” meant and thus adding that term to the construction would provide little guidance.

The Federal Circuit found that the Board [...]

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Patenting Web Advertising? Ask Alice, I Think She’ll Know

In a wide-ranging opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of invalidity for lack of patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 with respect to claims directed to web-based advertising. Chewy, Inc. v. International Business Machines, Corp., Case No. 22-1756 (Fed. Cir. March 5, 2024) (Moore, Stoll, Cunningham, JJ.)

Chewy filed suit against International Business Machines (IBM) seeking a declaration that Chewy’s website did not infringe multiple patents related to web-based advertising. IBM responded by filing infringement counterclaims. After claim construction and discovery, the district court granted Chewy’s motions for summary judgment of invalidity for lack of patent eligible subject matter with regard to the asserted claims of one patent and noninfringement of the asserted claims of a second patent.

The claims of the first patent relate to providing a targeted advertisement from an “information repository” to a user based on the user’s internet search. In affirming the district court, the Federal Circuit first determined that, under Alice step 1, “[t]he claims broadly recite correlating advertisements with search results using a generic process.” The Court noted that the claims “merely recite the concept of identifying advertisements based on search results, without any specificity as to how this is accomplished,” and are directed to “the abstract idea of identifying advertisements based on search results.”

Turning to Alice step 2, the Federal Circuit found that the claims used a generic database and conventional processing steps, and “claimed use of a conventional repository for storing advertisements and associated search results in a well-known way.” Because “the claims recite the generic process for obtaining search results from a search query and using the search results to identify advertisements,” they failed under Alice step 2 and did not claim patent eligible subject matter under § 101.

Regarding the second asserted patent, the district court construed the claim term “selectively storing advertising objects at a store established at the reception system” as requiring the “advertising objects” to be “pre-fetched” and retrieved before the user requested a page on a website. Because it was undisputed that “Chewy retrieves advertisements in response to a user requesting a page” and not before, the district court ruled that Chewy’s website did not meet this claim limitation. Looking to the intrinsic claim construction evidence, the Federal Circuit held that the district court’s claim construction was amply supported by the specification and prosecution history and affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement. Of note, the Court explained that the specification made multiple references to pre-fetching as being part “of the present invention” and therefore limited the scope of the claims.

With respect to one asserted claim of the second patent, which did not include the limitation at issue, the district court found that Chewy’s website did not practice the limitation of “establishing characterizations for respective users based on the compiled data” because “the record undisputedly showed they deliver advertisements based on the page the user is currently viewing, [...]

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That’s So Metal: Narrow Limitation Doesn’t Contradict Broader One

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s indefiniteness determination, finding that two claim limitations – one broad and one narrow – were not contradictory since it was possible to meet the requirements of both. Maxell, Ltd. v. Amperex Technology Limited, Case No. 23-1194 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 6, 2024) (Prost, Taranto, Chen, JJ.)

Maxell owns a patent directed to a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Maxell filed suit against Amperex alleging infringement. Following claim construction proceedings, the district court found the claims to be indefinite based on two limitations in the independent claim that recited the variable M1. The relevant claim limitations read:

1- wherein M1 represents at least one transition metal element selected from Co, Ni and Mn, [. . .]

2- wherein the content of Co in the transition metal M1 of the formulae (1) and (2) is from 30% by mole to 100% by mole[.]

The district court found that these two limitations contradicted each other because limitation 1 recited Co (cobalt) as an optional transition metal selected from a Markush group for M1, whereas limitation 2 recited a minimum Co content of 30% in M1. The district court reasoned that the claims were indefinite because limitation 1 did not require the presence of cobalt, whereas limitation 2 did. In its claim construction order, the district court stated that simultaneous recitation that a claim element is both optional and required is a “contradiction on its face.” Maxell appealed.

The Federal Circuit found no contradiction between the two limitations, explaining that “[i]t is perfectly possible for a selected [M1] to satisfy both of these limitations.” The Court reasoned that in the context of Maxell’s patent, it was of no import that the two requirements (i.e., that M1 must comprise cobalt, nickel (Ni) or manganese (Mn), and that M1 must comprise at least 30% cobalt) were recited in separate clauses. It was enough that both limitations could be simultaneously satisfied. The Court further reasoned that the inclusion of two requirements in a claim did not create an otherwise nonexistent contradiction because the claim language must be read as a whole and not merely on a limitation-by-limitation basis. The Court also looked to the prosecution history to provide context for the ordering of the claim limitations at issue and explained that limitation 2 was added during prosecution to overcome a prior art reference that primarily used nickel as a transition metal.

The Federal Circuit explained that contrary to the district court’s characterization, the subject claim limitations did not grant options. Instead, they stated requirements that must be met to fall within the scope of the claimed invention. The Court noted that, rather than contradicting limitation 1, limitation 2 narrowed it. If limitation 2 had been recited in a dependent claim, there would be no contradiction, notwithstanding that proper construction of a dependent claim requires importation of all limitations from the claims from which it depends. The same conclusion applied when both limitations were [...]

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Sliced and Diced: Operating Manuals Are Printed Publications

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the Patent Trial & Appeal Board’s non-obviousness determination, finding that the Board erred in determining that an operating manual did not qualify as printed publication prior art. Weber, Inc. v. Provisur Technologies, Inc., Case Nos. 22-1751; -1813 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 8, 2024) (Reyna, Hughes, Stark, JJ.)

Provisur owns two patents related to advanced high-speed mechanical slicers used in food processing facilities that precisely slice and package food items such as meats and cheeses. The key components recited in the patent claims are a “loading apparatus” designed to load food items, a “feeding apparatus” responsible for supplying food items to a slicer, and a “stop gate” intended to regulate the assembly of food items prior to their entry into the slicing mechanism.

Weber filed inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging the validity of several claims of the patents based on certain operating manuals. During the IPR proceedings, the Board determined that Weber’s operating manuals did not qualify as prior art printed publications because they were distributed selectively and subject to confidentiality restrictions. The Board also concluded that the prior art combinations, which included Weber, failed to disclose crucial claim limitations, notably the “disposed over” and “stop gate” limitations. The Board found the challenged claims not unpatentable. Weber appealed.

Weber argued that the Board erred in determining that the operating manuals were insufficiently accessible to constitute printed publications, specifically contending that the Board misapplied the Federal Circuit’s 2009 decision in Cordis Corp. v. Boston Scientific Corp. The Court agreed. It explained that unlike Cordis, where academic monographs were limited to distribution among a select few, Weber’s operating manuals were intended for distribution to purchasers of the machines and others to provide instructions on food slicer usage and maintenance. The Court explained that the evidence in the form of delivery records and email exchanges showed that manuals were available to customers upon purchase or request. The Federal Circuit also noted that the manuals were not bound by any confidentiality restrictions. The Court thus concluded that the operating manuals qualified as printed publications.

Turning to claim construction, the Federal Circuit reversed the Board’s interpretation of the “disposed over” and “stop gate” limitations. Consistent with long-standing precedent, the Court emphasized the importance of examining intrinsic evidence, including the claims themselves, the specification and the patent’s prosecution history. Weber argued that the claims’ language implied a broader feed apparatus positioning over the loading apparatus without strict alignment requirements. Supported by expert opinions, Weber contended that neither the claim language nor the specification mandated direct alignment. The Court agreed with Weber. The Court emphasized that “disposed over” demanded only a general positioning of the feed apparatus above the loading apparatus, not a direct positioning as the Board had construed.

Similarly, concerning the “stop gate” limitation, the Federal Circuit agreed that the Board’s determination was not supported by substantial evidence because evidence, such as the manuals, disclosed the claimed conveyer mechanism in a manner sufficient to establish its [...]

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Even a Non-Explicit Claim Construction Can Be Erroneous

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board decision finding the challenged patent claims not obvious over the prior art. The Court found that the Board, after concluding that no claim construction was required, implicitly construed the claim limitation at issue and did so erroneously. Google LLC v. EcoFactor, Case Nos. 22-1750; -1767 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 7, 2024) (Reyna, Taranto, Stark, JJ.)

Google filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) challenging claims of an EcoFactor patent related to dynamic climate control systems that factor outside weather conditions and thermal conditions inside the home to balance comfort and energy savings. The challenged claims define a method for reducing the cycling time of a climate control system involving “retrieving a target time at which [the] structure [(e.g., a house)] is desired to reach a target temperature.” The challenged method claims recite a step of “determining a first time prior to said target time at which [the] climate control system should turn on to reach the target temperature by the target time.” The relevant claim limitation reads:

[D]etermining a first time prior to said target time at which said climate control system should turn on to reach the target temperature by the target time based at least in part on [i] said one or more thermal performance values of said structure, [ii] said performance characteristic of said climate control system, [iii] said first internal temperature, [iv] said first external temperature, and [v] the forecasted temperature.

During the IPR proceedings, the parties disputed whether a prior art reference disclosed a method involving determining a first time prior to the target time based on a first internal temperature. Google argued that the prior art taught a calculation of a first time prior to the target time based on thermal performance values (input [i]) calculated from internal temperature values (input [iii]). EcoFactor argued that each of the inputs in the claim limitation was a distinct value not dependent on or calculated from any other input. Based on the claim language, the Board determined that claim construction was unnecessary and concluded that inputs [i] – [v] of the relevant claim limitation were separate inputs using different data. The Board concluded that Google had not shown that the challenged claims were unpatentable, reasoning that Google’s theory of obviousness relied on a single input as the basis for both input [i] and input [iii].

Google appealed. Google argued that although the Board stated that no construction was necessary, it incorrectly construed the claim limitation to require five discrete inputs.

The Federal Circuit agreed with Google, finding that the Board’s assessment of the claim limitation implicitly established the claim scope by requiring inputs [i] – [v] to be completely separate. The Court reasoned that the plain claim language did not provide any indication that none of the listed inputs could be based on any other input(s). Imputing this requirement into the limitation was therefore an act of claim construction.

The Federal [...]

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Ordinary Meaning: “Identifying” Doesn’t Mean Detecting; It Means Identifying

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial & Appeal Board’s decisions finding one set of challenged claims patentable and another set of challenged claims in the same patent unpatentable. The Court determined that the Board properly construed a disputed claim term and made factual findings regarding prior art that were supported by substantial evidence. Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. v. Personal Genomics Taiwan, Inc., Case Nos. 22-1410; -1554 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 9, 2024) (Prost, Taranto, Hughes, JJ.)

Pacific Biosciences of California (PacBio) filed two petitions seeking inter partes review (IPR) of different claim groups in a patent owned by Personal Genomics Taiwan (PGI). The challenged patent is directed to an apparatus for “identifying a single biomolecule” and methods of using or making that apparatus. The petitions overlapped in terms of the challenged claims but differed in terms of the invoked prior art. PacBio’s challenge (on both anticipation and obviousness) was based principally on the Hassibi reference in one IPR and on the Choumane reference in the other.

The Board rejected PacBio’s challenge to certain claims of the patent in its decision on the first IPR, but it agreed with PacBio’s challenge to certain claims of the patent in its decision in the other. In reaching its decisions, the Board construed the term “identifying a single biomolecule” as requiring an apparatus capable of ascertaining the identity of one single individual biomolecule by examining only that biomolecule. In the first decision, the Board found that this limitation was not taught by the Hassibi reference. In contrast, in the other IPR, the Board found that this limitation was taught by the Choumane reference. Both parties appealed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed both Board decisions. First, the Court agreed with the Board’s construction that the disputed claim term (“single biomolecule”) was the ordinary meaning of the phrase in context, namely that there was no apparent reason for the inclusion of the word “single” in the claim term unless to indicate that the capability required was identification of a molecule with just that one molecule in view. The Court explained that the specification supported this understanding by repeatedly stressing that this “single biomolecule” capability was critical to the invention and by differentiating the examination of individual biomolecules from examination of an ensemble of copied biomolecules. The Court also pointed to dependent claims of the patent to provide support for the Board’s construction (in terms of claim differentiation), noting that those claims recited using the claimed apparatus for expressly described multiple-molecule examinations.

Regarding the prior issues on appeal, the Federal Circuit concluded that the Board’s factual findings were supported by substantial evidence. Turning to the Hassibi reference, the Court stated that the Board reasonably credited the testimony of PGI’s expert and the Hassibi reference itself in finding that Hassibi only disclosed the capability to ascertain the identity of a single biomolecule using a BRC assay or different assay. With respect to the Choumane reference, the Court found that the Board reasonably [...]

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Espresso Yourself: When Prosecution History as a Whole Doesn’t Demonstrate Clear, Unmistakable Disclaimer

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded a district court’s claim construction and related summary judgment rulings after determining that the district court erred in construing a claim term by improperly limiting the plain and ordinary meaning of the term. K-fee System GmbH v. Nespresso USA, Inc., Case No. 22-2042 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 26, 2023) (Taranto, Clevenger, Stoll, JJ.)

K-fee filed a lawsuit against Nespresso alleging infringement of three K-fee patents directed toward coffee machine portion capsules that use a barcode. The district court issued a claim construction order construing the term “barcode,” which was present in every asserted claim. In the claim construction order, the district court characterized the dispute as “whether statements made by K-fee System GmbH . . . before the EPO [European Patent Office] concerning the meaning of ‘barcode’ should influence the plain and ordinary meaning of that limitation in these proceedings.”

In the EPO, Nespresso’s foreign affiliate had challenged the validity of K-fee’s related European patent, and K-fee had responded seeking to distinguish a particular piece of prior art (Jarisch/D1). Because the statements made to the EPO were submitted to the US Patent & Trademark Office during prosecution of the asserted patents, the district court analyzed the statements as part of the intrinsic record. The district court concluded that K-fee had “argued strenuously before the EPO for a particular ‘plain and ordinary meaning,’ which excluded ‘bit codes’—codes made up of two binary symbols.” Based on the EPO submissions, the district court construed the claim term “barcode” to:

its plain and ordinary meaning (i.e., a code having bars of variable width, which includes the lines and gaps), the scope of which is understood by the clear and unequivocal statements K-fee made to the EPO (i.e., the scope of barcode does not include the type of bit code disclosed in Jarisch/D1).

Based on that construction of “barcode,” Nespresso moved for summary judgment of noninfringement. It argued that its accused products operated identically to Jarisch capsules, which K-fee distinguished before the EPO, since both use a machine-readable code with only two binary symbols. The district court agreed. When applying its construction at summary judgment, the district court clarified that using “the type of bit code disclosed in Jarisch” … means “a binary code containing only ‘0s’ and ‘1s.’” Thus, the district court read K-fee’s EPO statements “to mean that a barcode must ‘contain more than only two binary symbols’ and, by extension, that any code that contains only two binary symbols could not be a barcode.” Because the court found that “there was no dispute that Nespresso’s accused products used a code having only two symbols,” it granted Nespresso’s motion for summary judgment of noninfringement. K-fee appealed.

Considering the issue de novo, the Federal Circuit reviewed K-fee’s statements to the EPO in context and disagreed “that the ordinary meaning of ‘barcode’ excludes ‘bit codes’ (in some sense, two-value codes) or even bit codes of ‘the type . . . disclosed in Jarisch’ to [...]

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Store This Element: Lexicography Controls Claim Term Definition Over Plain and Ordinary Meaning

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board obviousness finding, determining that the Board properly applied the patentee’s lexicography in construing a disputed claim term and properly treated arguments raised by the parties in the reply and sur-reply briefings. ParkerVision, Inc. v. Vidal, Case No. 22-1548 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 15, 2023) (Prost, Wallach, Chen, JJ.)

Intel filed a petition for inter partes review of a patent owned by ParkerVision. The challenged patent is directed to wireless local area networks (WLANs) that use frequency translation technology and incorporate another patent that describes down-conversion utilizing down-converter modules. The challenged claim is directed to apparatuses for down-converting electromagnetic (EM) signals. Among other things, the claim recites “wherein said first and said second frequency down-conversion modules each comprise a switch and a storage element.” The Board found the challenged claim unpatentable and in doing so, construed the term “storage element” to mean “an element of a system that stores non-negligible energy from an input signal.” The Board based its construction on the description of “storage modules” in a patent incorporated by reference into the challenged patent. ParkerVision appealed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s construction, finding that ParkerVision had acted as its own lexicographer when it defined the term “storage element” in the incorporated-by-reference patent. The Court relied on a “critical” paragraph from the incorporated-by-reference patent that states: “[s]torage modules and storage capacitances, on the other hand, refer to systems that store a non-negligible amount of energy from an input EM signal.” The Court reasoned that the term “refer to,” together with the “as used herein” language from a preceding sentence, conveyed an intent for the sentence to be definitional and applicable to the whole patent rather than to a specific embodiment. To that end, the Court reiterated that a patentee may act as its own lexicographer by crafting a definition for a claim term rather than relying on the plain and ordinary meaning of that term, and that when a patentee does so, the definition may act as a disavowal of the full scope of the plain and ordinary meaning of the term.

ParkerVision also argued that the Board impermissibly relied on arguments allegedly raised for the first time in Intel’s reply brief, and that it erred in excluding certain arguments made by ParkerVision on sur-reply. The Federal Circuit rejected both arguments. The Court reasoned that because ParkerVision proposed a new claim construction in its patent owner response, Intel was permitted to argue and present evidence of obviousness under that new construction as long as such evidence relied on the same embodiments for each invalidity ground as were relied on in the petition.

The Federal Circuit also noted that ParkerVision’s arguments on sur-reply exceeded the scope of its patent owner response. While ParkerVision’s patent owner response proposed that the “storage element” be an element of the energy transfer system and store non-negligible amounts of energy from an input EM signal, ParkerVision only argued that the [...]

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Resorting to Extrinsic Evidence Is Necessary When Intrinsic Evidence Is Muddied

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that the limitation “a pH of 13 or higher” could not be construed using the asserted patents’ intrinsic evidence and therefore remanded to the district court with instructions to consider the extrinsic evidence and its impact on claim construction. Actelion Pharms. Ltd v. Mylan Pharms. Inc., Case No. 22-1889 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 6, 2023) (Reyna, Stoll, Stark, JJ.)

Mylan Pharmaceuticals sought market entry for its generic epoprostenol—a small molecule hypertension drug—via an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA). Mylan certified under Paragraph IV with respect to two Orange Book-listed patents that Actelion Pharmaceuticals owned. Actelion timely asserted both patents and achieved a favorable claim construction for the term “a pH of 13 or higher.” This limitation is central to the pharmaceutical breakthrough that the asserted patents disclose, which is stably solubilizing the otherwise unstable epoprostenol. The asserted patents teach that epoprostenol bulk solutions’ pH should preferably be adjusted to about 12.5 to 13.5. Mylan contended that this language meant the claim should not encompass anything below pH 13 (i.e., leaving only a fraction of the disclosure’s preferred range within the scope of the issued claims). The district court disagreed, adopting Actelion’s position that the limitation encompassed values that “rounded” to pH 13 (i.e., pH 12.5 and above). This prompted a stipulated infringement judgment. Mylan appealed.

The Federal Circuit reviewed the district court’s construction de novo, explaining that the district court’s construction was a ruling as a matter of law because no extrinsic evidence was considered. The Court then examined the claim language, specifications and prosecution histories in turn.

Regarding the claim language, the Federal Circuit rejected the parties’ invitations to acknowledge certain prior decisions as articulating bright-line rules. Instead, the Court appeared to endorse analyzing the intrinsic evidence on a case-by-case basis when construing similar range limitations. For example, the Court explained that “there is no blanket rule that ranges, or specifically open-ended ranges, must foreclose rounding.” The Court also rejected the following rules concerning range precision:

  • Avoiding rounding requires terms of precision, such as “precisely” or “exactly.”
  • The absence of approximation language dictates a precise value.

In contrast, the Federal Circuit signaled that district courts should properly account for a range’s technical implications (or at least ranges concerning the pH scale) even if that means looking to extrinsic evidence.

Regarding the specifications and prosecution histories, the Federal Circuit disagreed with the district court’s finding that both were inconsistent with Mylan’s position that the disputed limitation reflected a higher degree of precision. The Court concluded that there was little to glean from either, finding that the specifications were as clear as “muddied water” and the prosecution histories provided no insight into the relevant pH range—between pH 12 and pH 13.

The Federal Circuit ultimately concluded that this was an instance in which properly construing a claim limitation required the aid of extrinsic evidence, invoking the Supreme Court of the United States’ guidance from Teva v. Sandoz that extrinsic evidence [...]

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