A rather fact specific inquiry here, but the basic lesson seems to be that a claim should not be interpreted so as to import requirements for the greater context when the claim itself is more specifically directed to a particular aspect.
Background / Facts: The patent here was directed to anchoring cartilage within a joint. It discloses drilling a hole through the hard outer shell of bone into the less dense cancellous bone followed by a surgeon inserting a small, but resilient device (an “anchor”) by pressing it into the smaller drilled hole. The anchor compresses as it passes through that hole, but once in the softer cancellous bone, the resilience causes it to expand again, causing it to stay in place. In this regard, claim 1 recites “[a] method for anchoring in bone a member and attached suture” that comprises “lodging the member within the hole by pressing the member with attached suture into the hole.”
Issue(s): Whether to be “lodged” the anchor has to “withstand all the forces of surgery” as construed by the district court.
Holding(s): No. Claim 1 is directed only to anchoring a suture in the bone, not to the full surgical operation. The “lodging” step occurs just after “forming” the hole and “attaching” a suture, but prior to “attaching tissue.” None of the other steps of the actual surgery that occur after that attachment of tissue to the anchor are claimed. “Instead, lodging, as claimed, only relates to how the anchor stays in place after being initially pressed into the bone … [T]he surgeon’s tug, while possibly necessary to complete the surgery, is not part of what is claimed.”