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No Buyer's Remorse – ASBCA Orders Air Force to Pay for What It Got

Client Alert | 1 min read | 10.09.15

In Honeywell Int'l, Inc. (Sept. 24, 2015), the ASBCA held that the Air Force must pay for two solar arrays that the contractor (represented by C&M) provided under an Energy Savings Performance Contract, even though the Board had earlier determined that certain of the contract's payment terms were "invalid." In finding the Air Force liable under an implied-in-fact contract theory, the Board rejected arguments that the Air Force had never intended to acquire the solar arrays and that the contracting officers had lacked authority to bind the government, explaining that the Air Force, simply by refusing to accept them, could not escape liability for the arrays that were "supplied … as designed, completed on time, and installed as required."


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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims.  Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution.  Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012).  The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication....