Gaffney v. Printy

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that “the task of determining whether the construed claim reads on the accused product is for the finder of fact”
• explaining that unlike “consisting of,” “consisting essentially of” is “open to unlisted ingredients that do not materially affect the basic and novel properties of the invention”
• holding that, for a claim reciting glass “consisting es- sentially of” certain materials, the district court properly “left it to the jury to determine whether the amounts of [an unclaimed ingredient had] a material effect on the basic and novel characteristics of the glass”
• stating that a patent applicant “could have defined the scope of the phrase ‘consisting essentially of for purposes of its patent by making clear in its specification what it regarded as constituting a material change in the basic and novel characteristics of the invention’ ”
• requiring court to distinguish between legal question of claim construction and the factual question of infringement
• noting a court is charged with defining the claim “with whatever specificity and precision is warranted by the language of the claim and the evidence bearing on the proper construction”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).