Opinion ID: 427227
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Claim Construction--Prosecution History

Text: 31 The district court noted some of Fromson's arguments during prosecution of his application, in which he stressed the importance of reacting anodized aluminum with alkali metal silicate. However, whether the interaction of these two materials was a reaction or something else was immaterial to consideration of the prior art. It does not appear, moreover, that Fromson used reacting in his arguments any differently than he had in the specification and claims, i.e., to describe what he believed the interaction was between oxide coated aluminum and an aqueous solution of alkali metal silicate. Thus, Fromson's arguments focused on the fact of an interaction and production of a new layer with particular properties, not on the specific nature of the interaction or on any chemical structure of the layer. 32 That Fromson speculated, on one page of a response to a rejection, that the reaction layer is believed to be in the nature of a commercial zeolite is of no moment, in view of the total absence from the other thirteen pages in that response of any reference to formation of an aluminosilicate or zeolite, and in view of his clear labeling of the zeolite statement as a belief. Instead, Fromson referred in those thirteen pages to an aluminum oxide-sodium silicate reaction surface or layer, indicating that he did not know, and did not care, what the reaction or the structure of the resulting product might be. 33 Advance and its customers argue that the prime issue in this appeal is the doctrine of prosecution history (file wrapper) estoppel. That doctrine, however, is inapplicable here. If there be literal infringement, direct and contributory (as there may be here under a proper construction of the claims), the doctrine is irrelevant. Even if it were applicable, an examination of a prosecution history demonstrating that reaction was merely a theoretical label having no influence on the patentability of the claimed invention as a whole demonstrates the absence of prosecution history estoppel.