- "Claims need not be plain on their face in order to avoid condemnation for indefiniteness; rather, claims must only be amenable to construction."
- "Claim terms must provide a discernible boundary between what is claimed and what is not claimed…."
- "However, an inventor need not explain every detail because a patent is read by those of skill in the art. … Well known industry standards need not be repeated in a patent."
- "This court has repeatedly stated that a patent applicant need not include in the specification that which is already known to and available to a person of ordinary skill in the art."
- “[B]ecause claim construction frequently poses difficult questions over which reasonable minds may disagree, proof of indefiniteness must meet ‘an exacting standard.’ Halliburton Energy Servs., Inc. v. M-I LLC, 514 F.3d 1244, 1249 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Only claims ‘not amenable to construction’ or ‘insolubly ambiguous’ are indefinite. Id. at 1250 (quoting Datamize, 417 F.3d at 1347). A claim is not indefinite merely because parties disagree concerning its construction. An accused infringer must thus demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that one of ordinary skill in the relevant art could not discern the boundaries of the claim based on the claim language, the specification, the prosecution history, and the knowledge in the relevant art.”
HEARING COMPONENTS, INC. V. SHURE, INC.
- "Not all terms of degree are indefinite. However, the specification must provide some standard for measuring that degree."
- "Although 'readily'does not refer to a mathematical measure of degree, in Datamize [417 F.3d 1342, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2005)], we addressed the 'purely subjective' claim term 'aesthetically pleasing' and stated that, as with terms of degree, “a court must determine whether the patent’s specification supplies some standard for measuring the scope of the phrase."
POWER-ONE, INC. V. ARTESYN TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
- "Claims using relative terms such as ‘near’ or ‘adapted to’ are insolubly ambiguous only if they provide no guidance to those skilled in the art as to the scope of that requirement."
- "Here, a person of ordinary skill in the field would understand the meaning of ‘near’ and ‘adapted to’ because the environment dictates the necessary preciseness of the terms."
- "The fact that the claim is not defined using a precise numerical measurement does not render it incapable of providing meaningful guidance to the jury because the claim language, when taken in context of the entire patent, provides a sufficiently reasonable meaning to one skilled in the art of distributed power systems."
ENZO BIOCHEM, INC. V. APPLERA CORP.
- “The claims are not indefinite even if some experimentation is required to determine the exact level of detection achieved by the applicants using their exemplary linkage groups.”
- “As a preliminary matter, we observe that a claim cannot be both indefinite and anticipated. … If a claim is indefinite, the claim, by definition, cannot be construed. Without a discernable claim construction, an anticipation analysis cannot be performed.”
