Article by Shamita D. Etienne and Jeffrey A. Woller
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a construction of the claim term "high frequency" where the district court used dictionary definitions to supply the ordinary and customary meaning of the term. Intellectual Property Development, Inc. v. UA-Columbia Cablevision of Westchester, Inc., Case No. 02-1248 (Fed. Cir. July 21, 2003).
Intellectual Property Development, Inc. (IPD) sued UA-Columbia Cablevision of Westchester, Inc. (Cablevision) for the infringement of U.S. Pat. No. 4,135,202 (the `202 patent). Cablevision counterclaimed for declaratory judgments of invalidity, non-infringement and unenforceability.
In the case, the patent claim at issue recites a broadcasting system that transports signals between a central office and its various subscribers via a "high frequency" carrier signal. The parties disputed the range of frequencies that would qualify as a "high frequency." When the district court initially construed "high frequency," it held that the term would encompass frequencies within a 54-216 MHz range. Upon reconsideration, however, the court relied on a dictionary definition and further limited the range of "high frequency" to fall within a more narrow range of 3-30 MHz. Because Cablevision’s system operated in the 30-300 MHz range, the district court also granted Cablevision’s motion for non-infringement. IPD appealed, arguing that the district court erred in referring to extrinsic evidence, such as dictionaries, when "the intrinsic evidence, including the claim language, the specification and the prosecution history, establishes that ‘high frequency’ encompasses any frequency at which a conventional television receiver can receive and display a signal."
In affirming the lower court’s claim construction and its determination of non-infringement, the Federal Circuit rejected the patentee’s argument that the lower court "‘put the cart before the horse’ by looking at the dictionary definitions first instead of the specification to determine the meaning of the term ‘high frequency.’" Rather, the Court reasoned that "consulting the written description and prosecution history as a threshold step in the claim construction process, before any effort is made to discern the ordinary and customary meanings attributed to the words themselves, invites a violation of our precedent counseling against importing limitations into the claims." In its analysis, the Federal Circuit created a rebuttable presumption that a definition, such as that found in a dictionary, is the ordinary and customary meaning of a claim term: "[I]n the absence of an express intent to impart a novel meaning to claim terms, the words are presumed to take on the ordinary and customary meanings attributed to them by those of ordinary skill in the art."
In rejecting IDP’s argument that dictionary definitions should not be used in place of the patent specification to define claim terms, the Federal Circuit noted that "dictionaries, encyclopedias, and treatises, publicly available at the time the patent is issued, are objective resources that serve as reliable sources of information." Citing Texas Digital, the Federal Circuit also rejected IDP’s argument that the use of dictionaries is inappropriate because definitions of "high frequency" are not consistent from dictionary to dictionary: "‘[T]he intrinsic record must always be consulted to identify which of the different possible dictionary meanings of the claim terms in issue is most consistent with the use of the words by the inventor.’"
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