{"id":10430,"date":"2019-03-29T09:36:51","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T15:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=10430"},"modified":"2019-03-29T10:03:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T16:03:32","slug":"using-dependent-claims-to-emphasize-that-an-alleged-claim-term-is-structural-and-not-mpf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=10430","title":{"rendered":"Using dependent claims to emphasize that an alleged claim term is structural and not MPF"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I think a lot of practitioners will take note of Chief Judge Prost&#8217;s precedential opinion for the court today in <em>TEK Global, S.R.L., et al.  v. Sealant Systems Int&#8217;l. Inc., et al.<\/em>  In assessing whether a phrase invoked 112\u00b66\/112\u00b6(f), Chief Judge Prost looked to the dependent claims to see if they indicated that the purported means plus function phrase was structural:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Even more, the dependent claims suggest that \u00a7 112, \u00b6 6 does not govern. Indeed, they \u201cadd limitations that either describe particular structural features or flesh out whether the term has a particular structural meaning.\u201d<em>Diebold<\/em>, 899 F.3d at 1298. For example, dependent claim 27 recites \u201cat least one of said conduits . . . comprises a hose.\u201d \u2019110 patent col. 8 ll. 12\u201314. And SSI does not dispute that the \u201chose\u201d disclosed in the \u2019110 patent is structural.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read Chief Judge Prost&#8217;s precedential opinion for the court [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafc.uscourts.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/opinions-orders\/17-2507.Opinion.3-29-2019.pdf\">here<\/a>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read the referenced <em>Diebold Nixdorf v. ITC<\/em> opinion [<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=12484899874229782337&amp;q=diebold+nixdorf&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=4,131\">here<\/a>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The PTO might want to take note that its recent guidance entitled &#8220;<em>Examining Computer-Implemented Functional Claim Limitations for Compliance with 35 U.S.C. 112<\/em>&#8221; does not mention the <em>Diebold<\/em> case from August 2018 nor the use of dependent claims to analyze purported MPF terms.  A discussion of <em>Diebold<\/em> and <em>TEK<\/em> <em>Global<\/em> would be a useful addition to the recent guidance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think a lot of practitioners will take note of Chief Judge Prost&#8217;s precedential opinion for the court today in TEK Global, S.R.L., et al. v. Sealant Systems Int&#8217;l. Inc., et al. In assessing whether a phrase invoked 112\u00b66\/112\u00b6(f), Chief Judge Prost looked to the dependent claims to see if they indicated that the purported [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10430"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10434,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10430\/revisions\/10434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}