twenty in order to reach the section one nineteen issue on the other hand i think the second one nineteen issue is confused by the district court's decision and i think that creates problems for practice what would th little decisional law from the circuit on either one of these points and in both instances i think the district court not wrong there wasn't an awful lot of analysis on the section one twenty deeds in the district court's order and let me start with you know where does the one twenty dispute center it's centered really comes down in my mind to application eight because i met your application six it was basically the same language but the patent office got it right on the t application made under the cross reference to related applications at age six twenty two really really the question comes down if we just get down to the last three lines of the statement where it is is also in continuation are simply stated the question that's raised here is does that refer to application for the six three four equivocation or does it refer up to the top sentence the president potentially and i would submit to the court that if we apply the court's approach and claim construction of looking for the antecedent basis the proper reading of this application is also refers back to in the third line the six three four application application for which is indisputable even filed within the thirty month period of the p c t architecture and in so even though there is a lengthy clause in there between the six three four and this application is also that cause refers to a single us patent and it's specific priority da and what what the court did is could skip over the six three four and read this application is also as modifying the present application and i think that's wrong as a matter of record of grammar to eight nine zero four if we look at the syntax it's used in the cross reference to related applications there if the antecedent basis approach holds true because sixty three for an application in the later cross reference of this application always referred to the six three four and what simply happened is that as a new applications came up in the priority the new information from the preceding from the immediately preceding case was added and this application was made to refer to the six three four just to show you how technically we can get would it matter if there was instead of a semi colon a period before the phrase this application i think i think that would make it less  in versus a common versus a period there is another way of resolving this question with absolute clarity for practitioners and that is and it was actually done in the real world and that is the only applications  there is only one application in this chain that can do that and that application for and if the court were to look at all of the circumstances here what you have is you know of a still practitioner even put it this way i would presume if you're a reasonable person from from the case law is someone who is presumed to know the law priority complicated though it is that person would understand p t o got to write an application six and if you look at the face page of the patent they understood it exactly as we've articulated it three sets of lawyers before the litigation got rolling understood it exactly that way senseless in a claim made maybe this is a question more or for the other side but i'd like to hear from you about it but we have language in the claim that makes no sense and we have a law that says if there is real doubt about how to fix it we won't but if there isn't we will is that a standard that applies here and if it the dupont case the reasonable person and here in our view there's nothing to be strict at most it's debatable at most and i believe a straightforward application of your approach in plain language results with that issue in our favor and so if you step back to us for some of the question you know what what should we consider in the reasonable person times i would say first of all certainly you should consider how the application of the rules themselves would resolve the question that it's an argument that it can only be application for secondly you should consider that you're not on by how the patent office understood it and it's not just application six it's also application and where the priority was set for it in detail in the final history and then thirdly i think it's entirely fair to look at how actual reasonable person is with meaning interpretations there on a plain meaning is it refers to this application that the current application or another plane naming is it mean fares to the immediately preceding described application in that long paragraph and you come up with a third reading which requires us to read it in the context of each of these priorities plain to you i understand you going to try to guess what the context you're reading might be to some degree there is a burden from the perspective of facts some level of analysis is appropriate at least as many ways to describe these priority changes or are practitioners and so you know my my point to the court is is you you only have to go so far in this case and i understand it concerns are raising but if you look at your prior decisions by far the bulk of them deal with situations where there is no reference to the preceding application or one of the applications of the change and certainly there it's clear that it doesn't meet section one a one twenty applies to the entire act it impacts you know all of all of the statute it serves made clear in your prior decisions and if you are taking later rule where you're going to question of priorities because you'll be a great incentive as there was here to deliver gave not to the actual merits but to come after a year after people actually analyzed the priority claims and then come back with a completely new argument and i think in this particular case there's a wealth of evidence both intrinsic and giving the court a way i think that is the proper reading syntactically of the specification but if you just step back think about the sampling case we don't want people to have to search the records of the patent office you don't have to search here all you've got to do is look at the other applications and i think was being clever but let me just address the what do you have to do to analyze it it is no more complicated than looking at thirty seven c f r one point four nine five taking the thirty months from the french application that is april thirtieth two thousand and three applications six was two thousand and six applications eight was two thousand and eight only application for was filed within that time and i don't think that i don't think that puts much if any applications and that's where the portrait of subject because what the court did was then go on to read into section why nineteen exactly the limitation that said it had to be sept fo suggests that practitioners have not operated under that rule and if we look at the m p e piece at section four excuse me to a one point one four it says to do it says it is appropriate to do exactly what the applicant did here namely raise the foreign priority application for the first time in the application which you're claiming that's out occasionally tender and as long as you meet the timing requirements of the commissioner which was done under section one point five five that's all that's required and where the district court went off the rails is that a look at their comment to the proposed rule change in a fight if i reference to the i'll just describe it i don't want to see if you look at the proposed comment to rule one point five five what was done was that they wanted to well make clear that pertains or a decision was limited to fi that with no reference required exact only the reference requirement that in the specific application that you are claiming for a priority that i do make the claim there and what section one five five allows you to do is either make their claim within sixteen months of the original french application or within four months of the finding of the specific application and that's exactly what was done the claim may be be made made the end eight continuing application provided the parent has been filed within twelve months from the date of the earliest four and five so if we if we just apply that there would be referred to here would be the p c t two five age and under section one twenty application ten would be entitled to the filing date of that so the next sentence says that for had better comply with the filing requirement of one point five five if i read it as any of the continuing applications you are right i think and i think that is a commonsense reading from this perspective you know you don't know when you find out an application in which you are claiming priority to the p c t v but not to the french that you will ever be claiming priority or and so if you just went through this chain and you go down all the way to town that is the first time that the applicant here tried to claim back to the french are patient they specifically referenced the figures in the spec in the p c t they did the same thing in the french application the patent office understood it that way circumstances you're seeing how practitioners understand the application of these rules and i acknowledge your reading of to a one point one four but if if what happened clearly is that the applicant's attorneys when they were going through filing each successive out potentially updated the priority claim for the a mine and twenty two his argument to find the stand is that our most well applications six couldn't be a our continuation in part of application also have been here after patient three which was filed in november twenty sixth of two thousand and two in that fifty something that was intended or alternatively the skilled person could look at this say well i don't know what these people area when people see this application they take it to be synonymous with the present application i didn't mean a cave word when somebody reading this which of the prior applications listed and i'm looking at the standard that separates those two those two alternatives is is it beyond reasonable debate what the correct fix is and i guess that's not as open ended a standard as how would a reasonable person read it that's more cabinet and so the question one question is and this is why i ask you again about about what these phrases could within well it seems to be to be referring back to something that dude is out of time out so i would say we've got we've got our own three four and six that are candidates plus possibly something that should have been there in washington and that means comply with one twenty and application needs to refer not just to its immediate immediate predecessor but to everything preceding in that chain and i know that there is a kind of reference to that in encyclopedia brittanica but that didn't actually involve the question because the immediate presser predecessor was in fact they progenitor application so there was no difference so where does this come from that's a very good question  care that everyone is operating under the assumption on since the fifty two act of the office is operated on the assumption that it has to include that each one has to be updated to it so that each one is free standing and includes every one in the check because when we look twenty no one nineteen that's problematic is not with respect to just step to the construction i mean the other side needs to know one twenty one team so it doesn't help them too much to to play with this but it seems trouble i mean judge made a law that it established continuation practice and then the difficulty there is a very large hurdle which it seems to me is that if congress knew how to write what they intended for one two and so are out and that's to be judge rich in future if they are revealing to the person that i can overcome them that that was something that they came up with are but i would suggest that what they're looking at is very different scenarios where the prosecution and then are we will move into a different landscape which is not a continuation practice and no i am sorry that that if i guess kind of the way i was understanding it it's not really the right phrasing is it as the district court said that one nineteen its self requires everything in the chain to include the reference to one of these rather that here the first us application to landing one nineteen argument i think the sketch story structure and issue is clear in this court's decision and at global funds pointed out exactly what you said judge plague or that congress has  two differing statutes within the same act it is presumed that congress acted intentionally but also says in that case that where the language of the said truth is on ambiguous that's the end of the in practitioner was not breathing under and i think the court would would have to have in mind making this interpretation whether in fact kind of the rubric for other practitioners are operating under one one nineteen doesn't require it and previously think we have an obligation to do that well i do think you have an obligation to consider the policy behind it but i think the policies are different if you look at your decision the last one where you interpret one point and i'll  full twelve ninety three provided the criteria of section one twenty are mad at the application shall without exception receive the benefit of the earlier finding the statute does not limit its effect to only certain provisions under the patent law so one twenty steps forward the reference back up the chain one nineteen pertains to those situations where an applicant decides they want to claim back to form priority date here french one be that wasn't the case and for us it wasn't the case and six it wasn't the case and eight it didn't become the case until ten and you know one could could equal look at the policy behind them and say we're not going to burden practitioners with making all of that priority reference when they're not actually claiming priority so  go to the dismay beg the question of then why should you get the benefit of a bad date to begin with you can claim it intermediately and that goes back to you know having the benefit of the p c three five five that is that application three right there jay and so if we take this which is a that's clearly modifying six three four now we get to the semi colon this application is also a continuation of international application p c t two five eight anyone who looked it up would see that as a three five five is actually a continuation of the two five eight so a program that kind of grammatical structure yes and it's and from looking at the application say you can only see the one final all right well that's that's fair your honor the final point going to make history address your birth question doesn't of put a burden on a competitor i would suggest it puts an incredible burden on practitioners to not only do what is reasonable but to ensure that there could never be a second interpretation of a priority reference no matter how strange and when you look at a situation like this where we have a nice friendly valuable life saving technology where the defendant has every incentive to be for hours and hours