The Growing Importance of the Claim Vitiation Defense in Patent Cases (Part 2 of 2)

摘要

Although the Federal Circuit attempted to clarify the legal landscape for patent claim construction in the 2005 case Phillips v.AWH Corp., the ruling will not stop plaintiffs and defendants from continuing to vigorously litigate the scope and meaning of claims in patent infringement cases. For plaintiffs who receive an adverse claim construction ruling, however, asserting infringement under the doctrine of equivalents may prove to be a viable option. This article is in two parts, with the first part having run last month in the April issue of this journal. The first part of the article reviewed the key claim construction cases and described a court's process for construing claims.