Opinion ID: 209735
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: syllabic element

Text: The district court construed the term syllabic element as: [A] one-syllable letter group that either comprises a word or can be combined with other one-syllable letter groups to form a word. A syllabic element may be as small as a single letter. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Tex. Sys. v. BENQ Am. Corp., No. 1:05-CV-181 (W.D.Tex. July 14, 2007) (summarizing the rulings of the Claim Construction Order ). The Board of Regents asserts that this construction incorrectly requires a syllabic element to be one-syllable and proposes that syllabic element be construed as a word or a part of a word that can be combined with other words or parts of words to form a word. BENQ, on the other hand, argues that the term syllabic element either has the definition provided by the district court or is indefinite. After reviewing the intrinsic record, we conclude that the district court correctly construed the term syllabic element. [4] While we begin our inquiry with the language of the claims, Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed.Cir.1996), that language, by itself, provides little guidance in this case. Claim 10 does specify that each pre-programmed code [is] representative of a syllabic element and that a representation of the word [is formed] from the one or more syllabic elements. '112 Patent, col. 9 ll. 4-7. From this, however, we can simply conclude that a word is comprised of one or more syllabic elements. [5] We next turn to the specification, which repeatedly distinguishes between a word and a syllabic element and indicates that a word is comprised of syllabic elements, confirming our understanding of the claim language and explaining that the terms word and syllabic element are not coextensive in scope. See e.g., '112 Patent, Abstract ([S]yllabic elements ... are used to reconstruct the word.); id., col.1 ll.65-66 ([T]he apparatus recognizes a particular word in terms of syllabic elements.); id., col.2 ll.42-43 (identifying an alphabetic character string, such as a word or syllabic element). The specification also notes that [t]he syllabic elements can comprise any number of alphabetic characters (for example, from 1 to 9 alphabetic characters). Id., col.1 ll.66-68; see id., col.5 l.68-col.6 l.2 (explaining that the preferred embodiment has a vocabulary look-up table that accommodates syllabic elements ranging from one to nine characters in size). As explained by the district court, the most logical rationale for the only example having a nine-letter maximum is that the longest single syllables in the English language are nine letters in length. Claim Construction Order, slip op. at 16-17 (identifying seven single-syllable, nine-letter words: screeched, scratched, scrounged, scrunched, stretched, straights, and strengths). Finally, the specification provides a short description of the term syllabic element: In the preferred embodiment, syllabic elements are stored in memory and combined to create the words. For example, the CON letter group in contest, silicon, conference, contact, etc. is such a stored syllabic element. Thus, the vocabulary stored in the preferred embodiment includes common letter-groups, suffixes, prefixes, single letters, and a few complete words, genericly [sic] referred to as syllabic elements. Id., col.5 ll.5-12. This passage provides the specification's only example of a syllabic element  CON  and it is a one-syllable letter group that is both a word and able to be combined to form other words. This passage even compares this single-syllable letter group (the example syllabic element) to multi-syllabic words (i.e., contest, silicon, conference, contact, etc.), implying that a syllabic element is limited to a single syllable. The Board of Regents, on the other hand, argues that this passage in fact implies the opposite  that a syllabic element may be more than one syllable. It reasons that because common letter-groups, suffixes, [and] prefixes are referred to as `syllabic elements,' the term syllabic element must include every common letter-group, suffix, or prefix. According to the Board of Regents, because some well-known suffixes and prefixes include more than one syllable (e.g., hypo-, hyper-, -ation, -phyllic), this passage compels a construction that allows syllabic elements to be more than one syllable. We are not persuaded. Just because a syllabic element may be a prefix or a suffix does not mean that all prefixes and suffixes are syllabic elements. Similarly, this portion of the specification includes common letter-groups as possible syllabic elements, but even the Board of Regents does not contend that all common letter groups are syllabic elements. With the background provided by the claims and the specification, we examine the patent's prosecution history. [T]he prosecution history can often inform the meaning of the claim language by demonstrating how the inventor understood the invention and whether the inventor limited the invention in the course of prosecution, making the claim scope narrower than it would otherwise be. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1317 (Fed.Cir.2005) (en banc) (citing Vitronics, 90 F.3d at 1582-83). While there are times that the prosecution history lacks the clarity of other intrinsic sources, id., the prosecution history may be given substantial weight in construing a term where that term was added by amendment. See Jansen v. Rexall Sundown, Inc., 342 F.3d 1329, 1333 (Fed.Cir.2003) (In this case, the [claim phrases at issue] were added to gain allowance of the claims .... We must therefore give them weight, for the patentability of the claims hinged upon their presence in the claim language.). The Board of Regents added the term syllabic element to claim 10 during prosecution of the '112 Patent. Originally, claim 10 recited: matching said binary code with a pre-programmed code, said pre-programmed code being representative of an alphabetic character string.  (emphasis added). Two of its dependent claims further defined the claimed alphabetic character string  the first specified that the alphabetic character string comprised one or more syllabic elements which combine to form a word, while the second specified that it comprised a word. The examiner, however, rejected all three claims as anticipated by Rabiner, which describes processing a received signal to identify the word or words of [a] request. Moreover, the examiner noted that any recognized word input, as in Rabiner, necessarily comprises one or more syllabic elements as claimed by the dependent claim. In response, the Board of Regents amended claim 10, replacing an alphabetic character string with one or more syllabic elements, and canceled the two dependent claims (the latter of which specified that the character string comprised a word, as noted above). When describing the differences between its claims and Rabiner's disclosure, the Board of Regents equated syllabic elements to syllable-like letter groups. This prosecution history, like the specification, consistently distinguishes between a syllabic element and a word. Moreover, like the district court, we find illuminating the explanation that syllabic elements are syllable-like letter groups. See Claim Construction Order, slip op. at 7 (relying on this phrase despite the fact that, [a]t first glance, ... [it] may appear to have accomplished little more than the trading of one obscure term of art for another). Something is syllable-like when it shares a syllable's essential characteristic  the recognizable rhythmic beat of a spoken syllable. Thus, while syllable often refers primarily to language as it is spoken, a syllable-like letter group explicitly covers both spoken syllables and the written letter groups that are associated with these sounds. If, as the Board of Regents proposes, syllabic element were broadly defined to include letter groups having any number of syllables, then all words would also be syllabic elements (because every word is a single- or multi-syllabic letter group). This construction, however, does not square with the prosecution history. As noted above, claim 10 originally recited matching with an alphabetic character string, while one of its dependent claims specified that this string comprised a word. After the examiner identified a reference that showed matching with a word, the Board of Regents limited claim 10 to require matching with syllabic element(s) and canceled the dependent claim that required matching with words. The cancellation of this dependent claim indicates that the set of syllabic elements does not include all words. Moreover, if syllabic elements included words, then Rabiner's disclosure of matching with words would teach the portion of claim 10 that was amended to distinguish Rabiner. We decline to adopt a construction that would effect this nonsensical result. The Board of Regents insists that the amendments to claim 10 actually distinguished Rabiner on the ground that the reference did not teach combining syllabic elements. While the Board of Regents might have been able to distinguish Rabiner on this ground, the intrinsic record fails to support the argument that it actually did so. Thus, we conclude that the proper construction of syllabic element is a one-syllable letter group that either comprises a word or can be combined with other one-syllable letter groups to form a word. Moreover, we see no error in the second sentence of the district court's claim construction, which clarifies that a syllabic element may be as small as a single letter.