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Oracle and Google Tell the Court the Claim Constructions They Agree and Disagree On

By Pamela Jones et al.

Oracle and Google have filed a joint claim construction statement [PDF]. This is a standard thing that you have to do in all patent infringement cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It's a statement where the parties let the judge know how they each construe the words in the patents allegedly infringed.

What's a claim construction? I'd say it's where the parties argue about how to define words quantifying how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. But, that's me. I hate patent law. Here's how a patent lawyer explained claim construction on Patently O a couple of years ago. He loves patent law, so I'll let him tell you all the details.

Here's what I understand of it: patent applications are written in words, so to decide whether a patent has been infringed or not, you have to figure out what the words meant to the inventor and those skilled in the art at the time the patent was applied for. And of course, lawyers can't ever agree on specifics when so much is at stake, so they tell the judge what they can't agree on, and then the judge decides. This is early in that process.

Full post as published by Groklaw on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).