Moving Forward: Next Steps on Claim Construction

In NobelBiz v. Global Connect, the Federal Circuit has asked the winning appellant Global Connect to respond to NobelBiz’s Petition for Rehearing en Banc with response due October 13.

The case here focuses on whether the district court should have particularly construed the claim term “replacement telephone number” (as the Federal CIrcuit majority ruled) or instead was it permissible for the district court to let the infringement case to go to the jury on the simple and ordinary term (as the District Court did and supported by Judge Newman’s dissent).   NobelBiz presents three questions:

1. May a district court ever assign a “plain and ordinary meaning” construction? Or is an express construction required whenever a litigant asserts an O2 Micro “dispute,” as dictated by NobelBiz and Eon?
2. May the Federal Circuit narrow claim scope without finding lexicography or prosecution disclaimer, by parsing the intrinsic record and relying on “extra-record extrinsic evidence,” as occurred in NobelBiz?
3. May a district court refer the question of infringement to a jury when claim terms are assigned their plain and ordinary meaning?

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En Banc: Construing Claims

Please Define What you Mean by Ordinary Meaning