"//signed//" Doesn't Cut It
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 04.30.08
A claim certification was invalid, and the ASBCA had no jurisdiction to decide the case, when the contractor's president submitted it by email and simply typed "//signed//" above his name. The Board in Teknocraft Inc. (Apr. 3, 2008) acknowledged that both the contractor and the government had used the typed designation "//signed//" in their emails during performance, but held that "//signed//" was not a "discrete, verifiable symbol of an individual" and constituted an "incurable defect" in the certification.
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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25
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.
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.14.25
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