Broadening statements in the specification may act as a ceiling for claim breadth. Here, for example, the claimed “communications path” was found to be limited to wired communication at the exclusion of wireless communication because the specification, in asserting that the invention is not limited to telephone lines, recognized only other “twisted pair wiring” as alternatives. “[W]hen the specification clarifies that the full breadth of the invention is not limited to the expressed embodiments, it declares only that the patents may also reach any wired connection.” It may therefore be best to phrase broadening statements as simply alternative examples rather than definitions of acceptable elements.
Background / Facts: The patents being asserted here are directed to techniques for providing access to a local area network (LAN) from a relatively distant computer. While the specifications describe connecting two computer modems over physical wires, in particular a telephone line but more generally “any twisted pair wiring which is too long to permit conventional 10BASE-T or similar LAN interconnections,” the claims more generically recite that the two modems are connected via a “communications path.”
Issue(s): Whether the claimed “communications path” also captures wireless communication rather than being limited to wired communication.
Holding(s): No. In addition to noting that “the title of the [] patents indicates that they are directed to ‘Communicating Information Packets Via Telephone Lines’” and that the “specification describes ‘[t]his invention’ as one ‘particularly concerned’ with ‘two wire lines such as telephone subscriber lines,’” the court primarily relied on the fact that “every embodiment described in the specification utilizes a telephone wire, and when the specification clarifies that the full breadth of the invention is not limited to the expressed embodiments, it declares only that the patents may also reach any wired connection. [] Though these statements do not expressly exclude wireless communications from the meaning of ‘communications path,’ they do not include it, and they discourage that understanding.”