Opinion ID: 211104
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Water-Alcohol Mixture

Text: 41 First, EEI asserts that the district court misconstrued the term water-alcohol mixture because it did not limit the term composition to at least 30 percent water as described in the specification. In Phillips v. AWH Corp., we reaffirmed our often stated rule that the words of a claim `are generally given [the] ordinary and customary meaning' that they would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention. 415 F.3d 1303, 1312-13 (Fed.Cir.2005) ( en banc ) (quoting Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed.Cir.1996)). However, this person of ordinary skill in the art is deemed to read the claim term not only in the context of the particular claim in which the disputed term appears, but in the context of the entire patent, including the specification. Id. at 1313; see also Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 979 (Fed.Cir.1995) ( en banc ), aff'd, 517 U.S. 370, 116 S.Ct. 1384, 134 L.Ed.2d 577 (1996) (holding that the claims must be read in view of the specification, of which they are a part). Indeed, an inventor may use the specification to intentionally disclaim or disavow the broad scope of a claim. Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1316. 42 However, this intention must be clear, see Teleflex, Inc. v. Ficosa N. Am. Corp., 299 F.3d 1313, 1325 (Fed.Cir.2002) (The patentee may demonstrate an intent to deviate from the ordinary and accustomed meaning of a claim term by including in the specification expressions of manifest exclusion or restriction, representing a clear disavowal of claim scope.), and cannot draw limitations into the claim from a preferred embodiment, see Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1323 ([W]e have expressly rejected the contention that if a patent describes only a single embodiment, the claims of the patent must be construed as being limited to that embodiment.). Moreover, when a claim term is expressed in general descriptive words, we will not ordinarily limit the term to a numerical range that may appear in the written description or in other claims. Renishaw PLC v. Marposs Societa' per Azioni, 158 F.3d 1243, 1249 (Fed.Cir.1998); Modine Mfg. Co. v. U.S. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 75 F.3d 1545, 1551 (Fed. Cir.1996). 43 Here, the specification states that the amount of alcohol employed in the suspending material may vary widely but it usually forms between about 0 and 70 weight percent of the suspending material, and more usually between about 30 and about 50 weight percent. '937 patent, col.5, ll.19-23 (emphasis added). EEI maintains that this language explicitly limits the amount of alcohol in the suspending medium to a numerical range—between 0 and 70 percent. However, this language refers to a preferred embodiment of the invention, and the given numerical ranges are not used in a context meant to limit the claims. In fact, the language itself inherently recognizes that the numerical range should not limit the claim by noting that the amount of alcohol may vary widely and usually falls within a numerical range. Thus, the patentee did not limit the claim term as EEI suggests, 2 and the district court did not err in its claim construction. 44