Opinion ID: 775530
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: District Court's Section 255 Decision

Text: 48 Section 255, entitled Certificate of correction of applicant's mistake, provides that: 49 Whenever a mistake of a clerical or typographical nature, or of minor character, which was not the fault of the Patent and Trademark Office, appears in a patent and a showing has been made that such mistake occurred in good faith, the Director may, upon payment of the required fee, issue a certificate of correction, if the correction does not involve such changes in the patent as would constitute new matter or would require re-examination. Such patent, together with the certificate, shall have the same effect and operation in law on the trial of actions for causes thereafter arising as if the same had been originally issued in such corrected form. 50 35 U.S.C. 255 (Supp. V 1999). 51 The district court focused on the initial requirement that the mistake be of a clerical or typographical nature, or of minor character. 35 U.S.C. 255. The court addressed these two branches separately. 52 In construing the phrase mistake of a clerical or typographical nature in 35 U.S.C. 255, the district court followed the PTO's own precedent and required that, [a]bsent very unique and unusual circumstances, a clerical or typographical error should be manifest from the contents of the file of the patent sought to be corrected. Opinion, 92 F.Supp.2d at 1008 (citing In re Arnott, 19 USPQ2d 1049, 1053 (Comm'r Patents & Trademarks 1991)). Once the district court had made this legal determination, the court proceeded to examine the patent and its prosecution history and determined that nothing . . . suggest[ed] that the reference to 'rear walls' is a clerical or typographical error. The district court further determined that the prosecution history actually indicated that the change to rear walls was intentional. Opinion, 92 F.Supp.2d at 1009. Using its interpretation of the statute, the court then applied the APA's abuse of discretion standard to the PTO's factual determinations and concluded that it would have been an abuse of discretion for the PTO to find that the alleged mistake was either typographical or clerical in nature. Id. at 1008-09. 53 Regarding the second branch, allowing correction of a mistake of minor character, the district court followed the Third Circuit in holding as a matter of law that the statute does not authorize a broadening of the claims. Id. at 16-17 (quoting Eagle Iron Works v. McLanahan Corp., 429 F.2d 1375, 1383, 166 USPQ 225, 231 (3d Cir. 1970)). The court then proceeded to construe both the original claim and the corrected claim and, based on the resulting legal determinations, concluded that the correction of the alleged mistake in this case did broaden the claims. Opinion, 92 F.Supp.2d at 1008. Since the correction had resulted in a broadened claim, the court concluded that the corrected mistake was not of minor character, and thus was not correctable under 255. Id. at 18. The court's analysis of this second branch involved exclusively legal determinations that were reviewed without deference. 54 Having determined that neither the first nor the second branch of the first requirement was met, the district court declared that the certificate of correction, and hence corrected claim 1, was invalid. Opinion, slip op. at 1010. The district court, accordingly, did not need to address any additional requirements of 255, such as whether the alleged mistake was not the fault of the Patent and Trademark Office and whether a showing ha[d] been made that such mistake occurred in good faith. 35 U.S.C. 255. 55