A blog about patent, copyright and trademark law in the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York

Court Finds Order Bias in Claim Terms

In a December 2, 2013 ruling, Judge Jed S. Rakoff in construing 24 claim terms in ADREA, LLC's patent infringement action against Barnes & Noble, Inc. over its ebook reader, construed the terms "selecting a title from the transmitted list of titles," and " "supplying a selected electronic book corresponding to the selected title to be encrypted" to have an order bias.  Judge Rakoff wrote:  "Although it is true that '[u]nless the steps of a method actually recite an order, the steps are not ordinarily construed to require one,' . . . 'if, as a matter of logic or grammar, they must be performed in the order in which they are written,' an ordered construction is required."  The Court ruled that an ordered construction is required here because the supplied ebook must first be selected before it can be supplied.
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