“Claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the supporting description”, the line is from In re Hyatt 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667. On another hand, a claim must be interpreted in light of the specification without reading limitations from the specification into the claim.

So where is the line between them? Actually, no one can tell you, and there is no clear answer to this question, such as the same for many law statements, and that’s properly why judges get pay so much. 

Fortunately, there are guidelines and an abundant of case laws be the pointer for us, such as In re Zletz, 13 USPQ2d1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989) and Phillips v. AWH Corp., 75 USPQ2d 1321,1326 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc).

My take is this read the claims as broadly as their terms reasonably allowed, and the reasonable allowed is in the sense (or in light) of the specification.       

编辑于 2019-8-11 著作权归作者所有