Be careful what you wish for. While terms like “substantially” give you some flexibility in asserting infringement and protecting against design-arounds, they also open you up to a broader range of prior art attacks. If these terms are necessary, the specification and probably one or more dependent claims should try to provide some context or criteria for its scope.
Background / Facts: The patented technology on reexamination was directed to manufacturing a computer module card on a printed circuit board (PCB) and employed the “chip-on-board technique” to eliminate from the manufacturing process the costly step of mounting components onto the surface of the PCB. Each module card thus produced had a packing area and a series of “golden fingers” (i.e., contact pads), where “a cutting edge of the golden fingers area is substantially aligned with a cutting edge of the base board” to facilitate cutting the board into individual module cards.
Issue(s): Whether the prior art’s golden fingers that are recessed from the cutting edge of the base board are nonetheless “substantially aligned” with the cutting edge of the board.
Holding(s): Yes. “Kingpak is correct that the edge of the golden finger areas disclosed in Lee are not completely aligned with the edge of the board. But the claims only require that the edge of the golden finger areas be ‘substantially aligned’ with the edge of the board. Figures 4 and 5 in Lee both depict a golden finger area that appears substantially aligned with the cutting edge of the base board. Kingpak provides no reason why the edges of those golden finger areas, contrary to Lee’s plain disclosure, are not substantially aligned with the edge of the base board. Thus, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Lee teaches the ‘substantially aligned’ limitation in the claims.”