PATENTS - Ancora v. Apple

Ancora Technologies, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., 2013-1378, 2014 WL 803104 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 3, 2014)

Regarding the scope of programs in the claims:

[A]lthough the examiner stated in his reasons for allowance that “the closest prior art systems, singly or collectively, do not teach licensed programs running at the OS level interacting with a program verification structure stored in the BIOS,” Notice of Allowability dated Feb. 20, 2002, at 4, in Appl. No. 09/164,777, that statement is at worst a slip: under the claims, it is indisputably the verifying software that interacts with the verification structure. In any event, the statement is not the applicants' statement. See Salazar v. Procter & Gamble Co., 414 F.3d 1342, 1345 (Fed.Cir.2005) (remarks in the examiner's statement of reasons for allowance insufficient to limit claim scope). And, as quoted above, the applicants were clear that the OS-level language referred to the verifying software.

Regarding definiteness:

In this case, moreover, a skilled artisan would appreciate that the passages at issue have a possible meaning that is not (what would be surprising) starkly irreconcilable with the clear meaning of “volatile” and “non-volatile” memory, which are the claim terms.

... 

Although oddly phrased, the reference to a “hard disk” as an example of RAM suggests that the patentee meant to refer to the hard disk only in its capacity as supplemental memory in conjunction with the main RAM-rather than to assert, in a passing and indirect manner, a meaning sharply in conflict with clear usage.