Sonix Technology v Publications International
Sonix Technology Co., Ltd. v. Publications International
No. 2016-1449 Fed. Cir. Jan. 5, 2017 Opinion by Circuit Judge Lourie with Circuit Judges O’Malley and Taranto.
Sonix appealed from the district court’s grant of summary judgment holding certain claims of its patent invalid. The district court concluded that the term “visually negligible” rendered the asserted claims indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 2. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) reversed. The Sonix patent purports to improve on conventional methods of encoding information on the surface of an object by rendering a graphical indicator (e.g., a matrix of small dots) “visually negligible.” An optical device reads the graphical indicator and outputs additional information.
Read the entire case summary here
Federal Bar member attorneys may access the full case summary by registered patent attorney B.C. “Bill” Killough in the February 2017 issue of Federal Circuit Case Digest.
B.C. Killough is a registered patent attorney based in Charleston, SC. On behalf of his clients, Bill has obtained more than 300 United States patents, participated in prosecuting more than 100 foreign patent applications and he has filed more than 1000 trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Offices.