Construing Patent Claims According to Their 'Interpretive Community': A Call for an Attorney-Plus-Artisan Perspective

摘要

Determination of the scope of a patented invention is one of the most contentious and difficult tasks of modern patent law. Claims-numbered clauses at the end of a patent - are meant to provide notice of what a patent covers and to describe a patented invention in a way that distinguishes it from prior art. Because of claims' centrality to determinations of patent scope and patent validity, the stakes in trying to improve the predictability of claim construction are large. Patents play a critical role in modern business planning and finance. Moreover, as with other types of intellectual property, the importance of patents appears to be increasing: recently, the number of United States patents issued each year has grown faster than the real gross domestic product. The pace and breadth of modern patenting has fed concerns that overlapping or fragmented patent rights may act to retard innovation rather than "promote .. . Progress."