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An Indefinite Article "A" Or "An" Means "One Or More"

Client Alert | 1 min read | 01.17.08

In Baldwin Graphic Systems v. Siebert (No. 07-1262, January 15, 2008), a Federal Circuit panel reaffirms that an indefinite article “a” or “an” carries the meaning of “one or more” in open-ended claims containing the transitional phrase “comprising.” At issue is a district court’s claim construction that the term “a pre-soaked fabric roll” means “a single pre-soaked fabric roll.” In reversing the district court, the Federal Circuit concludes “[t]hat ‘a’ or ‘an’ can mean ‘one or more’ is best described as a rule, rather than merely as a presumption or even a convention.” The exceptions to this rule are extremely limited; a patentee must evince a clear intent to limit ”a” or “an” to “one”.

The panel also notes that “[a]n exception to the general rule that ‘a’ or ‘an’ means more than one only arises where the language of the claims themselves, the specification, or the prosecution history necessitate a departure from the rule.” The subsequent use of the definite articles “the” or “said” in a claim to refer back to the same claim term is not deemed to change the general plural rule, but simply reinvokes that non-singular meaning.

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Client Alert | 8 min read | 06.30.25

AI Companies Prevail in Path-Breaking Decisions on Fair Use

Last week, artificial intelligence companies won two significant copyright infringement lawsuits brought by copyright holders, marking an important milestone in the development of the law around AI. These decisions – Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta (decided on June 23 and 25, 2025, respectively), along with a February 2025 decision in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence – suggest that AI companies have plausible defenses to the intellectual property claims that have dogged them since generative AI technologies became widely available several years ago. Whether AI companies can, in all cases, successfully assert that their use of copyrighted content is “fair” will depend on their circumstances and further development of the law by the courts and Congress....