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In re Suitco Surface, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2010)

By Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, Chris Singer, Sherri Oslick, and Jason Derry

By Kevin E. Noonan -- It is a bedrock principle of patent practice that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gives the terms of claims under examination their broadest reasonable construction. The rationale is that, in this way, the applicant has the opportunity to argue or amend the claims to be as broad as the prior art permits, and precludes the applicant from expanding beyond these limits the scope of granted claims it asserts against accused infringers. Regardless of the soundness of this practice as a policy matter, as applied by the Office it can (and frequently does) exceed the...

Full post as published by Patent Docs on April 15, 2010 (boomark / email).