At its heart, this case appears to be a cautionary tale of ambiguity being used against the drafting party (in this case, the patentee who is responsible for the content of its application). At the very least, original claim terminology should be consistent with the specification. While there can be a fine line, ambiguity in patent drafting is not equivalent to breadth.
Background / Facts: The patents being asserted here relate to content-based compression prior to transmission, a process that uses specialized encoders to compress data based on the content of the data (e.g., text vs. video). After compression, the system appends a content type descriptor to indicate the encoder that was used to compress the data block, in order to tell the system receiving the data how to decompress it. The claims, however, recite somewhat ambiguously the use of “content dependent data decompression,” which the district court took as implying that the decompression involved an analysis of the content of an encoded block to determine the appropriate decoder, rather than simply reading the content type descriptor appended to the corresponding content.
Issue(s): Whether the written description provides any guidance on “what is meant to be captured by content dependent data decompression that is distinct from content independent data decompression,” as required to ascertain whether the inventor had possession of such a system under the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 1.
Holding(s): No. “[T]he written descriptions of the … patents do not contain any definition of ‘content dependent data decompression,’” and “do not disclose decompression whereby an analysis of the content of an encoded block is used to determine the decoders for purposes of decompression.” Instead, “the term ‘content dependent data decompression’ only appears in the claims themselves, which contain limited language and no descriptive content and hence fail to show that [the patentee] invented or had possession of content-based or content-dependent data decompression.”