Court Opinion

ID: 9496721
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:33:59.413123+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:45.828708
License: Public Domain

RADER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This court today concludes that the invention claimed in any patent sharing the specification of the '649, '627, and '532 patents cannot encompass the use of a packet-switched communications network like the Internet. As all parties agree, the claim language in no way rules out the use of a packet-switched network. The specification also does not foreclose use of the Internet. The prosecution history of the '627 patent falls far short of a “clear and unambiguous” disclaimer of Internet coverage (as the majority finds), but rather suggests the contrary conclusion. Finally, this court today dismisses the rule in Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. United States Gypsum Co., 195 F.3d 1322 (Fed.Cir.1999) and applies the prosecution history of a later patent to limit the narrower claims of a patent issuing before such statements *1355were made. For these reasons, I must respectfully dissent.
This court today asserts that the language in the specification regarding “over” and “through” a telephone line somehow requires the claims to cover only those communication networks where nothing but a telephone line lies between the two end sites. To my eyes, that leap in logic is akin to Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Gorge on a motorcycle. Like Mr. Knievel, this court’s conclusion falls short. In the first place, this limitation does not appear anywhere in the claims. In addition, nothing in this record indicates that a person of skill in this art would find that limitation in the specification.
When I connect to the Internet (a packet-switched network) at home using my modem, I do it “over a telephone line.” When I send email to my colleagues from home, I do it “through a telephone line” as well as across the Internet. If I travel over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, this court would apparently conclude that I have traveled through nothing but rivers and woods. The terms “over” and “through” do not denote the sole medium of transmission or travel. If a person asks me to send them a file “over” the Internet, that request certainly would not preclude the use of a telephone line connected to a modem connected to the Internet. In sending the file, I would be sending data over my telephone line as well as over the Internet. The record contains no evidence to support the leap that “over a telephone line” must mean exclusively over a telephone line.
Most of the claims at issue never refer to the communication network between the end sites of the system. The claims focus on the “ends” of the communication system. The “middle” portion is essentially irrelevant to the invention. Claim 1 of the '532 patent is a method claim directed to “multiplexing,” “transmitting,” “receiving,” and “demultiplexing” voice and video data. Claim 1 of the '649 patent identifies a method that places headers on outgoing voice and computer data packets, and then multiplexes, transmits, receives, and dem-ultiplexes the data packets. These claims address what happens at each end of the communication system, not the travel routes for the packets between the ends.
This court today, however, goes beyond merely importing a limitation from the specification into the claims. First the court manufactures an unreasonable limitation out of vague specification references to “over” and “through.” Then the court imports that unstated limitation into the claims. At most, the specification can be read to require that all of the claims require the use of a telephone line in the transmitting, sending, or receiving elements. To my eyes, this court leaps into thin air when it says that the claims require the exclusive use of telephone line transmission.
To bolster the absence of limitation in the claims or specification, the court stretches to find a clear and unambiguous disclaimer in the prosecution history of the '627 patent. To the contrary, the examiner, who actually participated in that history, considered the applicant’s statements regarding the '627 patent and found that the claims do not limit themselves to a standard telephone line. In fact, because the claims encompassed.more than a mere telephone connection, the examiner renewed a rejection. In response to the examiner’s rejection in light of the Lewen reference, the applicant stated that Lewen operates using a “local area network (LAN)” requiring the data packets to “circulate around the LAN until reaching either the gateway or the node” where they can be sent to a remote site. The applicant explained that the '627 patent claims a system that does not use a LAN, but *1356“operates over a standard telephone line ... and establishes a point-to-point connection between ... each end of the line.”
The examiner responded by renewing the rejection and explaining that “the claims do not recite a limitation of a POTS telephone connection” and that “Lewen’s token ring transmission medium is a telephone line in the sense that it carries voice between telephones[] separated by some distance.” Thus, the examiner did not limit the invention to an exclusive telephone line connection. The examiner even considered the LAN in Lewen to satisfy the telephone connection proposed by the applicant. The LAN in Lewen connects to a packet-switched network.
Ultimately, the applicant amended the '627 claims to include the limitation of a modem. At that point, the PTO allowed the claims. The entire discussion in this prosecution history focused on the structure at each end of the communication system, not the middle medium of transmission. The applicant unambiguously disclaimed the use of a LAN and any system that does not connect modems at each end site. Neither the applicant nor the PTO, however, considered that disclaimer to extend to the use of a packet-switched network between sites. How can such circumstances show a clear and unambiguous disclaimer?
Rather than disclaiming connection to the Internet, the prosecution history more convincingly suggests that the inventor and the PTO saw these inventions as directly relevant to the Internet. The applicant eventually added the term “modem” to the '627 patent claims in order to distinguish the LAN in the Lewen reference. At the time of this amendment, a modem was the common and accepted way to connect to the Internet over a standard telephone line. . U.S. Patent No. 5,594,490, which issued January 4, 1997, states: “Modem 45 communicates with a corresponding modem 17 at distribution station 3 via a conventional point-to-point land-link such as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or internet.” Col. 9, 11. 47-56 (emphasis added). Contrary to this court’s conclusion, a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention would consider the addition of a modem as a clear indication that the inventor intended to connect the invention to packet-switched networks, such as the Internet. Even though modems connect to the Internet, as even the examiner acknowledged, this court emphasizes the “point-to-point” phrases in the prosecution history to exclude the Internet. This conclusion leaps to assume that the Internet does not allow point-to-point connections. The record, however, indicates exactly the opposite. As cited above, U.S. Patent No. 5,594,490 describes a point-to-point connection using the Internet. Moreover, according to Microsoft’s Computer Dictionary of 1997, Third Edition, a point-to-point communication protocol is “[a] data link protocol developed ... in 1991 for dial-up telephone connections, such as between a computer and the Internet.” Thus, within the context of this art, and at the time of the amendment, the term point-to-point referred to a variety of communication networks, including the Internet.
As a question of law, however, this court’s conclusion significantly erodes the requirement that a disclaimer of subject matter must be clear and unambiguous. See, e.g., Schwing GmbH v. Putzmeister Aktiengesellschaft, 305 F.3d 1318, 1324-25 (Fed.Cir.2002) (“Prosecution history ... cannot be used to limit the scope of a claim unless the applicant took a position before the PTO that would lead a competitor to believe that the applicant had disavowed coverage of the relevant subject matter.”) This record the examiner’s responses and understanding, the definitions of “point to point” in the patents and the art, and more *1357do not show clarity and a lack of ambiguity, to say the least. See Omega Engineering, Inc. v. Raytek, Corp., 334 F.3d 1314, 1326 (Fed.Cir.2003) (“To balance the importance of public notice and the right of patentees to seek broad patent coverage, we have thus consistently rejected prosecution statements too vague or ambiguous to qualify as a disavowal of claim scope.”) The only subject matter unambiguously disclaimed in this case was a connection other than a modem-telephone line at each communication end.
To make this court’s conclusion a longer leap, the alleged disclaimer by its terms applies only to the “modem” amendment that distinguished Lewen. Only the '627 patent’s claims use the term “modem.” In fact, the '627 patent was the only patent in this case rejected in light of Lewen. The '649 and '532 patents actually relied on Lewen as prior art. The examiner did not cite Lewen to reject the claims in those patents. The other patents do not even refer to a “modem.” Because the inventions in the various patents are different, the '627 patent needed to distinguish Lew-en while the others did not. The '649 patent claims the transmission of packe-tized voice and computer data. The '532 patent claims the transmission of packe-tized voice and video data. In contrast, the '627 patent claims only the transmission of paeketized voice data. According to the PTO, the transmission of voice data only was not sufficiently narrow to avoid the Lewen reference. Thus, the applicant added the limitation of a modem connected to a standard telephone line. This simply illustrates that the broad claims of one patent, in this case the '627, may require an additional limitation to avoid prior art, while narrower claims in related patents do not need the same limitation to avoid the same prior art. The '627 amendment does not explain the reason that this court extends the limitation to narrower claims in the other patents.
By way of illustration,' assume three patents (A, B, and C) share' a common specification directed to a method for hanging a picture. Patent A claims an attaching step and a leveling step; Patent B claims an attaching step and a centering step. Patent C claims only the attaching step. The prior art contains a reference to attaching pictures using nails. Because they contain limitations beyond attaching, patents A and B issue without rejection. Patent C, however, is rejected in light of the prior art. To distinguish the prior art, the applicant clarifies the attaching step is limited to using Velcro, not nails. Under what logic would a court limit the claims in Patents A and B to Velcro based on the later and inapplicable prosecution history of Patent C? That, however, is exactly what the majority does in this case.
Finally, the majority essentially disregards the holding of Georgia-Pacific. In this case, for the first time, this court applies the prosecution history of one patent to limit the claims of a related patent that was allowed before the creation of the prosecution history at issue. The '649 patent issued before the prosecution history of the '627 patent. Georgia-Pacific states that for an applicant “to he bound by the statement made to the PTO in connection with a later prosecution of a different patent, the statement would have to be one that the examiner relied upon in allowing the claims in the patent at issue.” 195 F.3d at 1333. In this case, the statements during the prosecution of the '627 patent could not have influenced the allowance of the '649 patent, because the '649 patent issued before those statements occurred.
In short, I cannot support this court’s many leaps of illogic. I would not import the exclusive telephone line limitation, if it even exists in the specification, into the claims. Moreover, I cannot find a clear and unambiguous disclaimer in the prose*1358cution history of the '627 patent. Even if the modem amendment in that patent disclaimed subject matter, I cannot find a justification to apply that limitation to the unambiguous claims of the '649 and '532 patents, which cover different inventions. For these reasons, I cannot join this opinion of the court.