Importance of claim construction

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sman998

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Importance of claim construction

in response to

Re: NOT TODAY (102)

jay7347

posted on May 11, 2011 10:39AM

Description

Claim construction is a major phase of a patent litigation where the meaning and scope of the claims themselves - the invention - is determined by the court. The outcome of this definition phase is crucial to the respective infringement and invalidity positions of the parties. The Thesaurus of Claim Constructiondirects practitioners to cases-and in contrast to searches on more general electronic databases, only those cases-in which claim terms have previously been construed, and further to the sources of the evidence used by previous courts to construe the terms in dispute.

"Claim language and claim construction are probably the most frequently debated legal issues in patent prosecution and patent litigation respectively.

"People often compare patents to deeds, but the English language doesn't allow the boundaries of invention to be staked out so precisely. With almost every word in every claim open to dispute, claim interpretation can overwhelm the process