Federal Circuit rules on indefinite patent claims
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has rejected a patent application for a coin change card that it found to be “insolubly ambiguous”.
It rejected the application due to a “lack of adequate written description”.
A coin change card is a thin plastic card with four different channels for storing different coins.
Inventor Thomas Packard’s application for a patent covering the card was initially rejected by the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The Federal Circuit’s May 6 decision upheld the PTAB’s ruling.
The case was ruled a week after arguments for Nautilus v Biosig were heard at the US Supreme Court. Nautilus also concerns what constitutes “indefiniteness” in a patent application.
In Nautilus, the Federal Circuit accepted medical device maker Biosig’s application for a patent covering a heart rate machine that eliminates signals given off by muscles when users move their arms or legs.
The patent application claims that electrodes used in the machine are mounted in a “spaced relationship”.
But fitness product developer Nautilus queried the application’s use of the phrasing “spaced relationship” and appealed the case to the US Supreme Court for a decision of indefiniteness on the application for a patent covering the product.
In the Federal Circuit decision on Packard, Judge Sheldon Plager raised concerns about the “insolubly ambiguous” ruling by the court.
He said: “Over time the ‘insolubly ambiguous’ phrase that Mr Packard alleges is the only correct test has taken on a life of its own.
“It has generated considerable controversy, and has now led to this case in which the issue of what the phrase might mean is argued as determinative of the appellant’s patent rights.”
Courtenay Brinckerhoff, partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Washington DC, said: “Indefiniteness should be approached from a perspective of requiring reasonable clarity because words always have more than one meaning. Language is not math.”
She added: “An applicant has to define the invention by what they have described in their application, so if you impose impossible standards of clarity they might not have the terminology.”
