Court Opinion

ID: 9497196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:45:22.936502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:02.969105
License: Public Domain

LINN, Circuit Judge,
with whom RADER and GAJARSA, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting from the court’s decision not to hear the case en banc.
The panel opinion in this case perpetuates the confusion our precedent in Lilly and Enzo has engendered in establishing “written description” as a separate requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 1, on which a patent may be held invalid. That precedent should be overturned. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the court’s decision not to hear this case en banc.
Section 112 of Title 35 of the United States Code requires a written description of the invention, but the measure of the sufficiency of that written description in meeting the conditions of patentability in paragraph 1 of that statute depends solely on whether it enables any person skilled in the art to which the invention pertains to make and use the claimed invention and sets forth the best mode of carrying out the invention. The question presented by 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 1, is not, “Does the written description disclose what the invention is?” The question is, “Does the written description describe the invention recited in the claims — themselves part of the specification — in terms that are sufficient to enable one of skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention and practice the best mode contemplated by the inventor?” That is the mandate of the statute and is all our precedent demanded prior to Regents of the University of California v. Eli Lilly & Co., 119 F.3d 1559 (Fed.Cir.1997).
Reading into paragraph 1 of section 112 an independent written description requirement, divorced from enablement, sets up an inevitable clash between the claims and the written description as the focus of the scope of coverage. This is ill-advised. Surely there is no principle more firmly established in patent law than the primacy of the claims in establishing the bounds of the right to exclude. See, e.g., Aro Mfg. Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U.S. 336, 339, 81 S.Ct. 599, 5 L.Ed.2d 592 (1961) (“[T]he claims made in the patent are the sole measure of the grant.”); McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U.S. 419, 424, 12 S.Ct. 76, 35 L.Ed. 800 (1891) (“ ‘The rights of the plaintiff depend upon the claim in his patent, according to its proper construction.’ ” (quoting Masury v. *1326Anderson, 16 F. Cas. 1087, 1088 (C.C.S.D.N.Y.1873))); White v. Dunbar, 119 U.S. 47, 52, 7 S.Ct. 72, 30 L.Ed. 303 (1886) (“The claim is a' statutory requirement, prescribed for the very purpose of making the patentee define precisely what his invention is; and it is unjust to the public, as well as an evasion of the law, to construe it in a manner different from the plain import of its terms.”); Burns v. Meyer, 100 U.S. 671, 672, 25 L.Ed. 733 (1879) (“[T]he terms of the claim in letters-patent ... define[ ] what the office, after a full examination of previous inventions and the state of the art, determines the applicant is entitled to.”); Merrill v. Yeomans, 94 U.S. 568, 570, 24 L.Ed. 235 (1876) (“This distinct and formal claim is, therefore, of primary importance, in the effort to ascertain precisely what it is that is patented.”); Johnson & Johnston Assocs. Inc. v. R.E. Serv. Co., 285 F.3d 1046, 1052 (Fed.Cir.2002) (en banc) (“Consistent with its scope definition and notice functions, the claim requirement presupposes that a patent applicant defines his invention in the claims, not in the specification. After all, the claims, not the specification, provide the measure of the patentee’s right to exclude.”); SRI Int’l v. Matsushita Elec. Corp. of Am., 775 F.2d 1107, 1121 n. 14 (Fed.Cir.1985) (“Specifications teach. Claims claim.”). The statute itself makes clear that Congress intended the claims to define the scope of coverage. 35 U.S.C. §.,112, ¶2 (2000) (“The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.”).
The primary role of the written description is to support the claims, assuring that persons skilled in the art can make and use the claimed invention. Id. ¶ 1 (“The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it,, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same.”); see also Kennecott Corp. v. Kyocera Int’l, Inc., 835 F.2d 1419, 1421 (Fed.Cir.1987) (“The purpose of the [written] description requirement ... is to state what is needed to fulfil the enablement criteria.”); cf. In re Barker, 559 F.2d 588, 594 (CCPA 1977) (Markey, C.J., dissenting) (“The attempt to create historical and current statutory support for a separate description requirement, which was solely a judicial (and unnecessary) response to chemical cases in which appellants were arguing that those skilled in the art might make and use a claimed invention, is mistaken.”).
Construing section 112 to contain a separate written description requirement beyond enablement and best mode creates confusion as to where the public and the courts should look to determine the scope of the patentee’s right to exclude. Under the panel’s analysis, a court looks to the written description to determine the parameters of the patentee’s invention — under guidelines yet to be articulated — and then determines if the claims, as properly construed, exceed those parameters. See Univ. of Rochester v. G.D. Searle & Co., 358 F.3d 916, 922-23 (Fed.Cir.2004) (“While it is true that this court and its predecessor have repeatedly held that claimed subject matter ‘need not be described in haec verba’ in the specification to satisfy the written description requirement, it is also true that the requirement must still be met in some way so as to ‘describe the claimed invention so that one skilled in the art can recognize what is claimed.’ ” (citations omitted)). There is simply no reason to interpret section 112 to require applicants for patent to set forth the metes and bounds of the claimed invention in two separate places in the appli*1327cation. That is the exclusive function of the claims.
The burden of Lilly and Enzo has fallen on the biotech industry disproportionately, but, as this decision makes clear, the new-found written description requirement will affect all fields of emerging technology. Univ. of Rochester, 358 F.3d at 925 (rejecting a limitation of the Lilly written description doctrine to genetic inventions on the ground that “the statute applies to all types of inventions”). When patent attorneys set out to write patent applications, they do so for an educated audience— those skilled in the art — and attempt to describe the invention in a way that enables those of ordinary skill to make and use the invention as claimed. Before the decision in Lilly, the practicing bar had accepted and found workable the notion elucidated in our precedent that § 112 requires a written description sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention — i.e., enablement. Lilly changed the landscape and set in motion the debate the panel opinion in this case perpetuates.
As I commented in my dissent from the court’s decision not to hear the Enzo case en banc, “Some have praised Lilly for maintaining the integrity of patent disclosures and for curbing patent filings for inventions that have not yet been made but are just nascent ideas. Others have been sharply critical of Lilly.” Enzo Biochem, Inc. v. Gen-Probe Inc., 323 F.3d 956, 989 (Fed.Cir.2002) (Linn, J., dissenting). That debate continues to leave uncertain how inventions are protected, how the United States Patent and Trademark Office discharges its responsibilities, and how business is conducted in emerging fields of law. These uncertainties will remain unless resolved by this court en banc or by the Supreme Court. The issue is important, is ripe for consideration, and deserves to be clarified, one way or the other. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the court’s refusal to consider this case en banc.