{"id":3796,"date":"2011-03-09T19:29:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T01:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=3796"},"modified":"2011-03-09T20:21:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T02:21:14","slug":"oral-argument-addresses-the-word-having-in-a-patent-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=3796","title":{"rendered":"Oral argument addresses the word &#8220;having&#8221; in a patent claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you use the word &#8220;having&#8221; interchangeably with the word &#8220;comprising&#8221; in your claim drafting practice, you might want to listen to the oral argument in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Biopolymer Engineering, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology v. Immunocorp, et al.<\/span>, 2010-1096 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 22, 2011).\u00a0 The counsel for plaintiff-appellant spent\u00a0most\u00a0of the oral argument trying to\u00a0persuade the panel that the district court had inappropriately given &#8220;having&#8221; a closed meaning such as that given to &#8220;consisting of&#8221; in patent claims rather than an open meaning as typically applied to &#8220;comprising&#8221; in patent claims.\u00a0 The claim at issue read as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A method for improving the growth and survival of animals comprising: administering an effective amount of a nutritional supplement to an animal, said nutritional supplement comprising water-insoluble yeast cell wall extract comprising purified beta (1,3) glucan having a particle size of about 1.0 micron or less.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The plaintiff-appellant argued that the district court had erred by excluding administration of nutritional supplements that included particle sizes less than about 1.0\u00a0micron\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">as well as<\/span> particle sizes\u00a0greater than about 1.0 micron.<\/p>\n<p>The panel affirmed the district court decision via a Rule 36 opinion without weighing in on the &#8220;having&#8221; argument in a written opinion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You can listen to the oral argument here: [<a href=\"http:\/\/oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov\/Audiomp3\/2010-1096.mp3\">Listen<\/a>].\u00a0 The pertinent discussion begins at about the 3:07 minute mark.<\/p>\n<p>The district court&#8217;s claim construction opinion is available here: [<a href=\"http:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=9227554217429837935&amp;q=BIOPOLYMER+ENGINEERING,+INC&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=2,6\">Read<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Circuit per curiam opinion is available here: [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafc.uscourts.gov\/images\/stories\/opinions-orders\/10-1096.pdf\">Read<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>For more on &#8220;having&#8221; see <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Crystal Semiconductor Corp. v. Tritech Microelecs. Int&#8217;l, Inc.<\/span>, 246 F.3d 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2001) and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Regents of University of California v. Eli Lilly and Co.<\/span>, 119 F.3d 1559 (Fed. Cir. 1997).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you use the word &#8220;having&#8221; interchangeably with the word &#8220;comprising&#8221; in your claim drafting practice, you might want to listen to the oral argument in Biopolymer Engineering, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology v. Immunocorp, et al., 2010-1096 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 22, 2011).\u00a0 The counsel for plaintiff-appellant spent\u00a0most\u00a0of the oral argument trying to\u00a0persuade the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796"}],"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=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3806,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions\/3806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}