Although claims are not necessarily limited to only the disclosed embodiments, they cannot be interpreted in a manner that would read out any of the claim terms. “[C]laims are interpreted with an eye toward giving effect to all terms in the claim.”
Background / Facts: The patent being asserted here via the ITC is directed to a structure used in backlit digital display screens to uniformly distribute light across the screen. Instead of conventional light-diffusing sheets, the patent describes and claims a purportedly improved arrangement using “structured arc sheets,” which absorb less light and are therefore more energy efficient.
Issue(s): Whether, in addition to the disclosed curved sheet embodiments, the claimed “structured arc sheets” also covers flat sheets with microscopic “arc-like” structures.
Holding(s): No. “Starting with the claim language, the most natural reading of ‘structured arc sheet’ is that the entire sheet must be in the shape of an arc, not that a part of the sheet contains an ‘arc-like’ structure. Although the claim language indicates that the two structured arc sheets have ‘different thickness or curvature’ in the disjunctive, construing the claim to include two flat sheets with different thicknesses—i.e., two sheets with a curvature of zero—would completely read the term ‘arc’ out of the claim. … The specification, moreover, provides no support for [the patentee’s] contention that ‘arc’ should be construed as ‘arc-like.’ The prosecution history of the [] patent is consistent with the claim language and specification.”