A recent opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit challenges the "conventional" wisdom that a patent owner seeking to establish infringement is usually advantaged by urging a "plain meaning" claim construction. PC Connector Solutions LLC v. SmartDisk Corp., Case No. 04-1180 (Fed. Cir. May 6, 2005) (Lourie, J.).
PC Connector’s patent is directed to the connection of computer peripherals via an adapter inserted into the diskette drive of a computer. The accused devices are diskette-shaped adapters for flash memories and smart cards accessed through a diskette drive. Infringement turned on the meaning of the claim term "conventional computer input/output port," and, in particular, whether flash memories and smart cards were a computer peripheral device having an input/output port "normally connectible" to a "conventional" computer input/output port.
Construing the claim term "conventional" to refer to technologies existing at the time of the invention, the district court granted SmartDisk’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement, reasoning that flash memories and smart cards used with the accused device were not peripherals that were "normally connectible" to a "conventional" computer input/output port in existence at the time of filing of the application for patent in 1988.
PC Connector appealed, arguing that the terms "conventional" and "normal" merely clarify the manner of connecting peripherals to a computer—i.e., through dedicated I/O ports typically clustered at the rear of the chassis—without imposing a time-based limitation on the I/O technologies involved.
The Federal Circuit affirmed, finding PC Connector’s argument to be an attempt to redefine the term "conventional" I/O port to "dedicated" I/O port. Finding nothing in the specification or the prosecution history to support the special definition, the Court held that the district court properly gave the term "conventional" its ordinary and customary meaning (that is, what is "conventional" at the time the patent is filed). Accordingly, the Court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement on the grounds that the flash memories and smart cards were not "normally connectible" to a "conventional" computer I/O port in existence at the time of filing in 1988.
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