Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc.
517 U.S. 370 (1996) Cited 5,366 times 65 Legal AnalysesHolding that claim construction is a matter of law for the court
Phillips v. AWH Corp.
415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) Cited 5,729 times 164 Legal AnalysesHolding that "because extrinsic evidence can help educate the court regarding the field of the invention and can help the court determine what a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand claim terms to mean, it is permissible for the district court in its sound discretion to admit and use such evidence"
Vitronics Corporation v. Conceptronic, Inc.
90 F.3d 1576 (Fed. Cir. 1996) Cited 4,321 times 10 Legal AnalysesHolding that a claim construction that excludes the preferred embodiment is "rarely, if ever, correct and would require highly persuasive evidentiary support"
O2 Micro Intern. v. Beyond Innov
521 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2008) Cited 1,217 times 13 Legal AnalysesHolding that under Fifth Circuit law the appellants' arguments on appeal regarding claim construction were not waived even though appellants did not object to the jury instructions because the arguments were made clear to the district court and the district court did not clearly indicate that it was open to changing its claim construction
Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC
792 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2015) Cited 614 times 28 Legal AnalysesHolding that a means-plus-function term is indefinite "if a person of ordinary skill in the art would be unable to recognize the structure in the specification and associate it with the corresponding function in the claim"
Catalina Market. Intern. v. Coolsavings.com
289 F.3d 801 (Fed. Cir. 2002) Cited 648 times 5 Legal AnalysesHolding that "the claims, specification, and prosecution history of the041 patent demonstrate that the preamble phrase `located at predesignated sites such as consumer stores' is not a limitation of Claim 1," for "the applicant did not rely on this phrase to define its invention nor is the phrase essential to understand limitations or terms in the claim body"
Aristocrat Tech v. Intern. Game
521 F.3d 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2008) Cited 324 times 18 Legal AnalysesHolding that in cases involving means-plus-function claims where structure is "a computer, or microprocessor, programmed to carry out an algorithm," specification must disclose corresponding algorithm to be sufficiently definite
Trs. of Columbia Univ. in the City of N.Y. v. Symantec Corp.
811 F.3d 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2016) Cited 252 times 7 Legal AnalysesHolding claims describing the extraction of machine code instructions from something that did not have machine code instructions indefinite as "nonsensical in the way a claim to extracting orange juice from apples would be"
Medical Instr. and Diagnostics v. Elekta
344 F.3d 1205 (Fed. Cir. 2003) Cited 324 times 1 Legal AnalysesHolding that district court erred in finding that defendant failed to demonstrate the existence of an issue of material fact on obvious; noting, inter alia , that "[defendant's] expert's declaration quotes from several prior art articles that expressly discuss the combination of stereotaxy with computer imaging technologies"
Noah Sys., Inc. v. Intuit Inc.
675 F.3d 1302 (Fed. Cir. 2012) Cited 214 times 4 Legal AnalysesHolding that because Noah had made the same indefiniteness arguments during claim construction before the district court, waiver did not apply
Section 112 - Specification
35 U.S.C. § 112 Cited 7,287 times 1030 Legal AnalysesRequiring patent applications to include a "specification" that provides, among other information, a written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and using it