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ARTICLE · 01 FEBRUARY 2008

District Court Improperly Added Limitation Not Supported By The Specification

McDermott Will & Emery
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Addressing the relationship between claim construction and a patent’s specification, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the district court erred by improperly adding a limitation not contained in the specification’s explicit definition of a claim term.

United StatesIntellectual Property
Brendan Cowles
Brendan Cowles
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Addressing the relationship between claim construction and a patent's specification, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the district court erred by improperly adding a limitation not contained in the specification's explicit definition of a claim term.  Hyperphrase Technologies, LLC v. Google, Inc., Case Nos. 07-1125, -1176 (Fed. Cir., Dec. 26, 2007) (Michel C.J.).

Hyperphrase filed suit against Google, alleging that Google's AutoLink and AdSense products infringed three of its patents.  Google moved for summary judgment of non-infringement, which the district court granted.  All but three of the asserted claims contained a limitation requiring a "reference" or "data reference," which the parties agreed had the same meaning in each of the patents-in-suit.  The district court held that the patentee defined "data reference" in the specification of one of the patents as

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