Hansen IP Law Successfully Invalidates Claims Asserted Against Polystak In Ex Parte Reexamination

 

July 2014, Bloomfield Hills, MI -  On June 23, 2014, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued a Notice of Intent to Issue a Reexamination Certificate for Entorian Technologies, LP's ("Entorian") U.S. Patent No. 5,420,751 (the "'751 Patent").  Based on two reexamination requests filed by the firm, the Patent Office has canceled claims 8, 13, and 14 of the '751 Patent.  Claims 13 and 14 were asserted by Entorian against Hansen IP Law's client Polystak, Inc. ("Polystak") in a case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  After the Patent Office rejected the claims, Entorian filed a Notice of Appeal, which it ultimately did not pursue.  The parties subsequently agreed to dismiss the action with prejudice.  Thanks very much to Adrian Pruetz and Andrew Choung at Glaser Weil in Los Angeles who litigated the lawsuit on behalf of Polystak.  

Federal Circuit's X2Y Attenuators Decision Reinforces The Importance Of Drafting Patents For Litigation 

 

On July 7, 2014, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in X2Y Attenuators, LLC v. International Trade Commission, which underscores the importance of carefully drafting patent applications with an eye toward litigation. The decision also demonstrates why form often dominates over substance in patent litigation.  A copy of the opinion can be found here

 

In X2Y Attenuators the Federal Circuit affirmed an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling that Intel and several other companies did not infringe X2Y Attenuators' patents directed to an electrode arrangement for reducing "parasitic capacitance."  Parasitic capacitance is a phenomenon that produces an undesirable build-up of electric charge between electrodes used for conduction.  In the embodiments of the X2Y Attenuators' patents, the electrode configuration included a central electrode that was sandwiched between oppositely charged "differential electrodes" on either side of it.  The differential electrodes were not included in the patent claims, presumably because they were not needed to distinguish the prior art considered by the Patent Office. 

The ITC held that the claims required the sandwich configuration of two differential electrodes on either side of a central electrode, even though the claims did not recite it.  The Federal Circuit affirmed this ruling, based on statements in the patent specification which the Court concluded rose to the level of "specification disavowal."  In particular, one of the patents-in-suit said that the sandwich configuration is "an essential element among all embodiments or connotations of the invention."   The Court noted that it had previously held that labeling an element or feature as "essential" may result in a disavowal of claim scope and that such disavowal applied to X2Y Attenuators' patent claims.

What is important to note is that this result turned on the drafting of the patents, not on the nature of the invention itself.  The Federal Circuit has repeatedly held that it is improper to limit patent claims to features in the specification which are not recited in the claims themselves.  Under such case law, patent claims will not be limited to an unclaimed feature in the specification, even if the feature is common to all embodiments and even if a person of ordinary skill in the art would conclude that the feature is "essential" to the operation of the invention. In other words, the X2Y Attenuators decision turns on the specification's characterization of the embodiments, not on the structure or operation of the embodiments themselves.  If the "essential" language had not been included in the patents, the Court almost certainly would have not reached the same holding, even if the embodiments had the exact same structure and function.

So, why would someone ever include this type of "essential" language in a patent?  To get the patent in the first place. 

During the prosecution of a patent application, the Patent Office will frequently assert that prior art references render patent claims obvious, and therefore, unpatentable.  This type of rejection can be overcome if it can be shown that features in the claims are critical or essential because they overcome problems the prior art could not solve.  The problem is that when a patent application is being written, the full scope of the prior art is often not known.  Even if a patentability search is conducted, the Patent Office may ultimately find more relevant prior art.  Therefore, patent attorneys often describe features that they think may be important in securing a patent as "critical" or "essential" so that they have a basis for arguing that those features are not obvious, should it prove necessary to do so. Sometimes, it turns out those features are not necessary to distinguish the prior art, in which case they may not end up in the claims (or at least all of the claims).  However, statements characterizing the features as critical or essential can nevertheless prompt a court to treat them as claim limitations.

Thus, there is a tension in drafting a patent application to improve the chances of actually receiving a patent and drafting the application to ensure that the resulting patent claims are not construed narrowly based on the specification embodiments.  Obtaining patents that are commercially useful and which will withstand challenges in litigation requires an understanding of this tension and the development of an appropriate application drafting strategy.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In This Issue
Federal Circuit's X2y Attenuators Decision Reinforces The Importance Of Drafting Patents For Litigation
Attorney Spotlight
  
For more information about Steve Hansen, click here.  
Interested in learning more about IP Law?
Check out our blog by clicking here.

Check out our articles by clicking here.
About Hansen IP Law PLLC
  
Hansen IP Law is an intellectual property law firm that provides "Big Law" caliber services using a small firm platform.  Although based in suburban Detroit, we represent clients throughout the United States and abroad. We do not operate on a leveraged model.  Each of our clients is represented by an experienced intellectual property attorney with over a decade of "Big Law" experience, including as a partner in Los Angeles and Detroit firms. Unlike many firms of our size, we have substantial patent litigation experience in courts throughout the United States, which allows us to strategically strengthen your intellectual property portfolio.  For more information, please contact Steve Hansen at 248 504 4849 or srh@hanseniplaw.com. You can also visit us on the web at www.hanseniplaw.com.