Johnson Worldwide Associates, Inc. v. Zebco Corporation and Brunswick Corporation

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that court will not accord a claim term its ordinary meaning “if the patentee has chosen to be his or her own lexicographer by clearly setting forth an explicit definition for a claim term.”
• holding that the written description did support the invention because, inter alia, the patentee used the term “heading” “interchangeably throughout the written description to refer to both the direction of the trolling motor and the direction of the boat.”
• noting that there “must be a textual reference in the actual language of the claim with which to associate a proffered claim construction”
• noting that there “must be a textual reference in the actual language of the claim with which to associate a proffered claim construction”
• stating that the ordinary meaning is to be used unless a special definition is shown “with reasonable clarity, definiteness, and precision”
• noting that a patentee’s explicit definition of a term should be heeded when possible

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).