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ARTICLE · 06 MARCH 2014

Broad Claim Terms Need Only Connote Sufficiently Definite Structure To Those Skilled In The Art

Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP
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EnOcean v. Face International: the Federal Circuit found all of EnOcean claims involved in Patent Interference No. 105,755 unpatentable, and remanded for further proceedings.

United StatesIntellectual Property
Esther Lim
Esther Lim
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In EnOcean GmbH v. Face International Corp., No. 12-1645 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 31, 2014), the Federal Circuit vacated-in-part the Board's order finding all of EnOcean GmbH's ("EnOcean") claims involved in Patent Interference No. 105,755 with Face International Corporation ("Face") unpatentable, and remanded for further proceedings.

EnOcean owns the rights to U.S. Patent Application No. 10/304,121 ("the EnOcean application"), which contains claims to a self-powered switch.  The named inventors on the EnOcean application originally disclosed their new switch in a German application filed on May 24, 2000, and in a PCT application filed on May 21, 2001.  Face is the real party of interest in U.S. Patent No. 7,084,529, which also claims a self-powered switch.  After the Board declared an interference between EnOcean and Face, it found that all the involved Face claims were unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103 in view of PCT Application No. PCT/GB01/00901 to Burrow ("the Burrow

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