Background
Life Spine, Inc. appealed a Final Written Decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an inter partes review. The Board had held that claims ten through fourteen of Globus Medical, Inc.’s United States Patent No. eight million eight hundred forty-five thousand seven hundred thirty-one were not unpatentable. The dispute centered on the meaning of the claim term complementary with one another. The Board had adopted a construction requiring the ramped portions to complete one another, while Life Spine argued for a broader meaning encompassing ramps with mirrored angles.
The court’s reasoning
The court reviewed the claim construction de novo. It found that while the dictionary definition of complementary suggests completing one another, the patent specification provided strong support for Life Spine’s construction. The specification disclosed an embodiment in Figure forty where the ramped portions had mirrored angles but did not complete one another. The court noted that claim construction should not exclude embodiments disclosed in the specification. Additionally, the prosecution history showed that the examiner understood the term to include mirrored angles and allowed the claims after amendments unrelated to the ramped portions. The court concluded that a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand the term to include mirrored angles.
What it means going forward
The reversal means that the challenged patent claims are now considered obvious under the court’s broader construction of the claim term. This outcome invalidates the patentability of the claims as they were previously upheld by the Board.