Addressing an issue of claim construction involving reliance on prosecution history to limit a claim term, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court decision of infringement and revised the district court’s claim construction. Seachange International, Inc. v C-Cor, Inc., Case Nos. 04-1375, -1498 (Fed. Cir. June 29, 2005) (Linn, J.).
The patent at issue is directed to the concept of extending the RAID-5 storage protocols to a distributed computer system. At issue, for purposes of claim construction, was whether the processor systems within the distributed computer systems were connected by any network or were limited to a network that connected every processor system through direct, point-to-point, two-way channel interconnections.
The district court found infringement of Seachange’s patent. C-Cor appealed, arguing the court had improperly construed the terms "network for data communications," "distributed computer systems" and "processor systems." When these terms are properly construed, C-Cor argued it would be entitled to a judgment of non-infringement.
The Federal Circuit reviewed the file history of the patent and found the applicant made two arguments related to patentability of a group of claims that included the claims at issue in this case. The examiner had rejected the entire group as un-patentable as being obvious over a pair of references. In responding, the applicant indicated it would treat a single claim as representative of the entire group. The applicant then argued the prior art did not show at least three processors interconnected, and the prior art did not describe a system where each processor was connected with each other processor in a point-to-point, two-way channel system. The applicant never separately argued any of the claims at issue in this case were patentably distinct on any other basis than these two arguments. The Federal Circuit found, given the manner in which these arguments were presented in the prosecution history, the applicant had applied both arguments to all of the claims in the group. Thus, each of the claims in the group were limited to a system where each processor is connected with each other processor in a point-to-point, two-way channel system.
Practice Note
While making arguments to groups of claims may save time, it may be safer to analyze arguments related to patentability on a claim-by-claim basis.
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