Emphasizing the public-notice function of a patent’s
specification, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
affirmed a district court’s construction of four patent claim
terms based entirely on intrinsic evidence. Indacon, Inc. v.
Facebook, Inc., Case No. 15-1129 (Fed. Cir., June 6, 2016)
(Stoll, J).
The patent at issue is directed to a system and method for
searching, indexing, perusing and manipulating files in a database,
particularly through the insertion of automatically generated
hyperlinks. Generally, the claimed system (1) allows for creating
“custom links” between terms found within a file that
are part of a database, (2) provides for a “link term”
that forms an association of one or more files within the custom
database, and (3) provides for an “alias term” that can
be further associated with the “link term.” Indacon
disputed the district court’s construction of four claim
terms: “alias,” “custom link,”
“custom linking relationship” and
