{"id":1894,"date":"2014-12-09T21:27:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T02:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2014-12-24T10:41:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T15:41:25","slug":"indefiniteness-lack-of-written-description-in-cmbr-and-pgr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1894","title":{"rendered":"Indefiniteness, Lack of Written Description in CMBR and PGR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In<em> Dealer Socket, Inc. v. AutoAlert, Inc.<\/em>, CBM2014-001146, Paper 19 (December 9, 2014), the Board instituted a covered business method review of claims 1, 3\u20135, 10, 12\u201314, 16, and 19 of U.S. Patent No. 8,086,529 on grounds of indefiniteness under \u00a7112, lack of written description, and patent ineligible subject matter under \u00a7101.\u00a0 <em>DealerSocket<\/em> is timely\u00a0reminder to practitioners that invalidity under 35 USC \u00a7112 available under covered business method review, as well as its cousin, post grant review.<\/p>\n<p>The indefiniteness challenge centered around the claim language: determining whether: &#8220;changed information <em>may affect<\/em> whether it is <em>favorable<\/em> for the customer to replace a first vehicle and first financial terms with a second vehicle and second financial terms&#8221;.\u00a0 The Board agreeing with Dealer Socket that &#8220;may affect&#8221; and favorable&#8221; were indefinite:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Given the evidence in this record, we determine that DealerSocket has established that the \u201cmay affect\u201d limitation is more likely than not indefinite.\u00a0 This limitation includes not one, but two terms of degree, \u201cmay affect\u201d and \u201cfavorable.\u201d Both are highly subjective. The uncertainty is multiplied when one subjective term is used to modify another, as is the case here. Contrary to the argument of AutoAlert, the Specification contains no objective standard for determining reasonably precise boundaries of either term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The written description challenged focused on the claim language &#8220;automatically accessing in real-time, by the computer system, information that has changed.\u201d\u00a0 The Board noting that the only disclosed embodiment performing retrieval of \u201cchanged information\u201d is not associated with the immediate presence of any particular customer, and is not described as occurring in real-time.<\/p>\n<p>However just because you can, doesn&#8217;t mean you should.\u00a0 There is at least the theoretical possibility of fixing some 35 USC \u00a7112\u00a0defects through amendment, while a successful \u00a7112 challenge in court results in invalidity.\u00a0 Of course, indefiniteness challenges are more likely to be overcome by rewording than\u00a0the lack of an adequate written description.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Dealer Socket, Inc. v. AutoAlert, Inc., CBM2014-001146, Paper 19 (December 9, 2014), the Board instituted a covered business method review of claims 1, 3\u20135, 10, 12\u201314, 16, and 19 of U.S. Patent No. 8,086,529 on grounds of indefiniteness under &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/?p=1894\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cbm","category-pgr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ZIpB-uy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1896,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aia.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}