Fed Circ overturns PTAB seismometer patent ruling
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has vacated a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision upholding the validity of a seismometer patent owned by Magseis Fairfield.
In a precedential opinion handed down on Wednesday, the court found that the PTAB misinterpreted a key term in the patent claims, leading it to narrow the scope of the patent and uphold its patentability.
Magseis Fairfield had sued rival Seabed Geosolutions, accusing it of infringing Magseis’ US reissue patent RE45,268. Seabed responded by petitioning for inter partes review of the patent. The PTAB’s final written decision published in November 2019 upheld the validity of Magseis’ patent, prompting Seabed to appeal to the Federal Circuit.
Seabed claimed key claims in the Magseis were obvious over prior art. The dispute relates to patent claims covering a geophone “internally fixed within” a seismometer. Geophones are a key seismometer component used to measure ground velocity.
Fixed or not?
Writing for the panel, Circuit Chief Judge Moore found that the board erred in its interpretation of the word “fixed”.
The PTAB had found that “fixed” constituted a special meaning that excluded certain types of devices known as “gimbaled geophones”. But according to the Federal Circuit word “fixed” here carried an ordinary meaning.
Moore said: “The specification never mentions gimbaled or non-gimbaled geophones, nor does it provide a reason to exclude gimbals. That silence does not support reading the claims to exclude gimbaled geophones.”
“Each time the word fixed came up in prosecution, the applicant and examiner understood it in its ordinary sense, i.e., mounted or fastened.”
The Federal Circuit recently reversed two prior patent invalidation rulings from the PTAB owned by chemical company Chemours.
It also ruled that LG Electronics will have to wait to appeal a judgment that it infringed a video display patent owned by Mondis.
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