by Steve Driskill | Jun 23, 2015 | [sub] reissue, PTO Procedure
Reissue cannot be used to revert an issued continuation-in-part application back to true divisional status. Here, for example, a reissue application filed to revert a continuation-in-part back to a divisional application and thereby invoke safe harbor protection...
by Steve Driskill | Jun 22, 2015 | [sub] teaching away, Obviousness
Merely espousing the benefits of its own invention over the state of the art is not sufficient for a prior art reference to teach away from combination with certain aspects of the state of the art. Here, for example, a short-tail mud motor with a vertically mounted...
by Steve Driskill | Jun 19, 2015 | [sub] preamble, Claim Interpretation
The fact that a portion of a claim preamble may be interpreted as a constituting a limitation does not require that the entire preamble constitute a limitation. Here, for example, the preamble “method for [a] generating and updating data for use in [b] a destination...
by Steve Driskill | Jun 18, 2015 | [sub] prosecution history, Estoppel / Disclaimer
A statement made during prosecution may be used to define a claim term regardless of the scientific accuracy of that statement. Here, for example, in response to identical indefiniteness rejections in separate child applications regarding the claim term “molecular...
by Steve Driskill | Jun 17, 2015 | [sub] extrinsic evidence, Claim Interpretation
A definition need only be widely accepted rather than universally accepted to form a proper basis for claim construction. Here, for example, although the patentee noted that the definition of the claimed “nanoparticles” and “microparticles” as being between 1 to 1000...
