Addressing claim construction issues in the context of an ex
parte reexamination, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit rejected the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's
(PTAB's or Board's) construction as unreasonable for
failing to account for the disclosure of the specification,
reversed the Board's anticipation rejections and remanded the
case with respect to certain obviousness rejections. In re: Man
Mach. Interface Techs. LLC, Case No. 15-1562 (Fed. Cir., Apr.
19, 2016) (Stoll, J).
Man Machine owns a patent directed to a television or computer
remote control with a multi-function thumb switch. A third party
requested ex parte reexamination of the patent. In the
ensuing reexamination, the examiner rejected the claims as both
anticipated and obvious, relying on prior art directed to, among
other things, a desktop mouse. The examiner construed the claim
term "adapted to be held by the human hand" to include
various "forms of grasp or grasping by a
