[00:00:12] Speaker 01:
Yeah.

[00:00:17] Speaker 01:
The next argued case this morning is number 15, 1931, in Rayel F. Centennial Limited.

[00:00:24] Speaker 01:
Mr. Stockwell.

[00:00:33] Speaker 00:
Thank you for having us here today.

[00:00:36] Speaker 00:
We're here to dispute the claim construction that the board interpreted for the term spine.

[00:00:43] Speaker 00:
in the 311 pattern during the inter partes reexamination.

[00:00:48] Speaker 00:
We believe they made an error in omitting the ordinary meaning of it and proceeding on to finding that it essentially didn't have any meaning.

[00:00:57] Speaker 00:
And from there, only looking at what the specific limitations were in the claim term itself.

[00:01:06] Speaker 00:
And in the claim language itself, it didn't provide a location for the spine

[00:01:12] Speaker 00:
And because of that, they said a spine could be interpreted to be a leg or in another position on the console.

[00:01:23] Speaker 00:
We believe that the board was overly reliant on district court claims instruction in related patent litigation for that, the 311 patent that was later settled and dismissed.

[00:01:36] Speaker 06:
Do I understand right, in the district court,

[00:01:39] Speaker 06:
there were proposed constructions and just correct everything I'm about to say that needs correction.

[00:01:45] Speaker 06:
There were proposed constructions and constructions about short spine and long spine but not of spine.

[00:01:53] Speaker 06:
Correct.

[00:01:54] Speaker 06:
Okay.

[00:01:54] Speaker 06:
So you didn't say anything one way or the other about what the ordinary meaning of spine is or in even what that word means in the context of a specification that

[00:02:09] Speaker 06:
distinguishes a spine from a leg.

[00:02:12] Speaker 00:
No.

[00:02:13] Speaker 00:
There was nothing in the litigation.

[00:02:16] Speaker 00:
It was assumed to be inherent.

[00:02:19] Speaker 00:
All of the defendants in there had similar configured products.

[00:02:24] Speaker 06:
Right.

[00:02:24] Speaker 06:
At the time of the claim construction in the district court litigation, I'm not sure the answer to this question matters.

[00:02:36] Speaker 06:
You've explained, I think, that infringement was at issue.

[00:02:39] Speaker 06:
Was validity at issue at that stage of the case, including the possibility of inventing that?

[00:02:46] Speaker 00:
I think validity was, but the re-exam is going on, and I don't think it ever got there.

[00:02:50] Speaker 00:
They did a claim construction, and I think from the claim construction, they were going to move on to do

[00:02:55] Speaker 00:
summary judgment motions, but the case terminated.

[00:02:59] Speaker 06:
So the fact that the accused products in that case clearly had a central spine in which the location was not at issue doesn't mean that the question of location

[00:03:18] Speaker 06:
would not have been at issue in the litigation because invalidity might have brought up that question in exactly the way it was brought up in this proceeding.

[00:03:28] Speaker 06:
Possibly.

[00:03:31] Speaker 00:
But we never got that far.

[00:03:32] Speaker 00:
No motions were filed before.

[00:03:34] Speaker 06:
And that's because the definition of the term spine was simply not an issue.

[00:03:39] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:03:40] Speaker 00:
And it was just inherent.

[00:03:41] Speaker 00:
They just went with spine.

[00:03:42] Speaker 00:
And then they focused on other limitations that they thought they could import into the construction

[00:03:48] Speaker 00:
a short spine or a long spine, particularly whether they could be used together or they had to be used interchangeably.

[00:03:58] Speaker 00:
The 311 patent, it shows the short spine being used in the console mount configuration and the long spine being used in the configuration where it's mounted on the XYZ frame directly to the long spine.

[00:04:16] Speaker 00:
And some of the other infringing products, some of them had a configuration where they would have a short spine, again, on the rear of the console, and they would bolt on a long spine directly to the short spine.

[00:04:28] Speaker 00:
And part of their infringement arguments were in the claim construction in the district court context, where it had to be used interchangeably.

[00:04:39] Speaker 00:
And so that was the whole focus of the claim construction there.

[00:04:43] Speaker 00:
At least for those terms.

[00:04:44] Speaker 00:
There were a lot of other terms that were being construed in that patent.

[00:04:47] Speaker 00:
In fact, there was like 20 or so terms.

[00:04:51] Speaker 00:
It was quite a few of them.

[00:05:00] Speaker 00:
In any case, the term spine itself evokes a mental image.

[00:05:08] Speaker 00:
The board recognized that it had this metaphor to anatomy.

[00:05:13] Speaker 00:
Anatomy is used frequently in a lot of different areas, including the furniture art.

[00:05:19] Speaker 00:
Legs is mentioned in our brief that we're all familiar with.

[00:05:23] Speaker 00:
Chairs have arms.

[00:05:24] Speaker 00:
And chairs can even have things like ears.

[00:05:27] Speaker 00:
And tables can have things like wings.

[00:05:29] Speaker 00:
And it's not unusual to have anatomical references.

[00:05:35] Speaker 06:
Chairs can have ears?

[00:05:36] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:05:38] Speaker 00:
These don't have them.

[00:05:41] Speaker 00:
Objection.

[00:05:43] Speaker 00:
Those are call leaders.

[00:05:45] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:05:47] Speaker 00:
And so using anatomy in engineering is used frequently.

[00:05:55] Speaker 00:
It's not unusual.

[00:05:57] Speaker 00:
It has a mental image that evokes and the term spine, its ordinary meaning, its backbone, we're familiar where it is.

[00:06:04] Speaker 00:
And the board said because we didn't have enough

[00:06:08] Speaker 00:
description of where it should be located, it wasn't going to give it its ordinary meaning.

[00:06:11] Speaker 00:
It was going to look for a separate definition in the patent.

[00:06:19] Speaker 00:
The patent doesn't have a strict definition.

[00:06:21] Speaker 00:
All it has is the drawings showing its location, and it has a description showing that the television happens to be mounted forward at the spine.

[00:06:32] Speaker 05:
I want to make sure I understand.

[00:06:35] Speaker 05:
What construction are you urging

[00:06:38] Speaker 05:
in place of the board's construction?

[00:06:43] Speaker 00:
That would just simply not be construed as a leg.

[00:06:46] Speaker 00:
I think a person of ordinary skill in the art would not mix up a leg with a spine.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
You could go a step beyond that and say that it has to be on the back and centrally located, like it would be on a human being.

[00:07:02] Speaker 01:
Was that what the board was asked to decide, just to leave it alone?

[00:07:08] Speaker 00:
We asked both, but we also went further and said, you know, when you think of spine, it's on the rear and center.

[00:07:19] Speaker 01:
Was the construction offered that could have been adopted or in the petition of the other side, this is inter-parties, was the construction presented that was more precise and

[00:07:35] Speaker 00:
It was mostly just an argument that a person of ordinary skill in the art wouldn't mix up the leg on Saxton with the short spine as disclosed in the 311 patent simply because of that positional connotation of the term spot.

[00:07:55] Speaker 06:
And this is, just explain to me if this is wrong, because this is not an

[00:08:02] Speaker 06:
an inter-parties review, an IPR, there was no kind of separate claim construction briefing.

[00:08:10] Speaker 06:
Claim construction was argued about in the context of the rejections.

[00:08:16] Speaker 06:
And you said, this prior art, there's only one way you find a spine there.

[00:08:21] Speaker 06:
And that's to say that the spine can be the leg, and that simply cannot be.

[00:08:26] Speaker 06:
So that was sort of implicit.

[00:08:27] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:08:28] Speaker 00:
So we didn't actually have proposed claim constructions.

[00:08:31] Speaker 00:
We just argued you wouldn't mix this up.

[00:08:35] Speaker 00:
Someone wouldn't look at Saxton and say, its legs are equivalent to spines.

[00:08:46] Speaker 00:
And then, yeah, that's really the district court claim construction is

[00:08:56] Speaker 00:
In that regard, it was taken out of context by the board because it relied heavily on that.

[00:09:00] Speaker 00:
This is what you said at the board.

[00:09:01] Speaker 00:
I'm not going to allow you to change your position there.

[00:09:04] Speaker 00:
But it's really not what it was about because of the context of litigation.

[00:09:08] Speaker 00:
It was about that interchangeability.

[00:09:10] Speaker 00:
All the accused products have that center, rear, and mount location.

[00:09:15] Speaker 00:
The term spine itself evokes that.

[00:09:18] Speaker 00:
It has a definition of that.

[00:09:19] Speaker 00:
It's common knowledge.

[00:09:21] Speaker 00:
And it makes sense.

[00:09:24] Speaker 00:
that way.

[00:09:24] Speaker 00:
So the normal claim construction should have stuck with the ordinary meaning.

[00:09:28] Speaker 00:
The board didn't need to go step down and say, OK, did you specifically define it?

[00:09:33] Speaker 00:
We're not going to give it its ordinary meaning because of the metaphorical meaning that you've given it.

[00:09:39] Speaker 00:
I don't have, the board said it didn't have evidence of that in the case that.

[00:09:44] Speaker 04:
Mr. Stockbrook, is it your position that we should articulate a claim construction?

[00:09:50] Speaker 00:
No.

[00:09:51] Speaker 00:
I think it should be,

[00:09:54] Speaker 00:
sent back saying that a Saxton leg, a person skilled in the art, wouldn't confuse a Saxton leg with a short spine, or with the term spine.

[00:10:04] Speaker 00:
That the spine evokes a metaphorical.

[00:10:06] Speaker 03:
You're saying we don't need to state a claim construction for the term for a short spine.

[00:10:16] Speaker 00:
Well, this is in the context of Interparte's re-examination.

[00:10:22] Speaker 00:
And it's the art we're looking at.

[00:10:24] Speaker 00:
The term spine itself, it's not really a claim construction.

[00:10:27] Speaker 00:
I guess you are construing the term, but it would have to have a center-rear mount on the console.

[00:10:39] Speaker 01:
Just to be sure that I understand that this was an inter-party's proceeding in the office.

[00:10:47] Speaker 01:
Inter-party's re-execution.

[00:10:48] Speaker 01:
But it was earlier than the American VENSAC

[00:10:52] Speaker 01:
so that you had the right to amend the claims as of right without the permission or the authorization of the board.

[00:11:01] Speaker 01:
And this really what seems curious is why whatever it was that was bothering the board that your claim was too broad could not have been remedied by amendment

[00:11:22] Speaker 01:
somehow place the spine where his spines logically appear?

[00:11:29] Speaker 00:
It is possible, or it could have been possible at the time, to amend the claims during the first round of prosecution in the patent owner's response.

[00:11:39] Speaker 00:
But we didn't think it was necessary.

[00:11:42] Speaker 00:
The term spine had a meaning.

[00:11:45] Speaker 00:
It had a common sense meaning.

[00:11:47] Speaker 00:
And it didn't need to have.

[00:11:49] Speaker 01:
That's strange.

[00:11:51] Speaker 01:
that we agree it does seem reasonably clear that the board said the spine includes these things which are really the legs on the side because your claim was stated too broadly and if we were to send it back wouldn't you have exactly the same situation?

[00:12:09] Speaker 00:
Not if you said it couldn't be equated with a leg because I don't think there's any other prior art out there that has it located where the spine is.

[00:12:21] Speaker 00:
At that point, the claim should be allowed, and the patent should reissue from the re-examination.

[00:12:28] Speaker 06:
Is there any distinction between saying, look, Saxton doesn't have a spine, so the anticipation rejection just needs to be reversed, and the obviousness rejections?

[00:12:45] Speaker 06:
Is there a basis for saying, since Saxton doesn't

[00:12:49] Speaker 06:
show this, that that can't be anticipatory.

[00:12:53] Speaker 06:
But is there a basis for our leaving open for a remand, whether a obviousness case never must survive?

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
There wouldn't be, because the only other reference, the Pfister reference, is mostly about the tilt pan mechanism on the TV holding structure, the XYZ frame.

[00:13:15] Speaker 00:
And so the obviousness combination there was

[00:13:17] Speaker 00:
Pfister's tilt and pan mechanism to Saxton's TV console configuration.

[00:13:25] Speaker 00:
That Pfister itself does not have a television console and there was no other prior art that has that configuration that would be better than what Saxton already is.

[00:13:42] Speaker 01:
Okay, let's hear from the director and we'll save you rebuttal time.

[00:13:51] Speaker 01:
Mr. Furman.

[00:13:52] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:13:56] Speaker 02:
May it please the court.

[00:13:58] Speaker 02:
We understand that certain anatomical terms are used to refer to components of furniture.

[00:14:04] Speaker 02:
As the foot of the bed, leg of a table, arm of a chair.

[00:14:09] Speaker 02:
Well, people would understand that, for example, a chair doesn't literally have an arm.

[00:14:15] Speaker 02:
They would understand what the arm of a chair refers to.

[00:14:17] Speaker 02:
To the contrary here, there's no evidence that the spine of a TV console is one of these commonly understood terms.

[00:14:24] Speaker 01:
But isn't there a point at which the common meaning takes over instead of pointing to the legs of this device and saying, well, that could be a spine?

[00:14:34] Speaker 01:
Seems very strange.

[00:14:36] Speaker 02:
Well, I think if you look at the patent, you can see that through both the claim language and the specification, they really equate the functionality of a leg to the functionality of a spine.

[00:14:49] Speaker 01:
The patent has a clear picture of a spine going up the middle of the back where spines go?

[00:14:57] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:14:58] Speaker 02:
The one embodiment of the

[00:15:00] Speaker 02:
of the shown in the figures has the first short spine.

[00:15:04] Speaker 01:
It's the embodiment.

[00:15:05] Speaker 01:
It's the preferred embodiment.

[00:15:06] Speaker 01:
It's the only embodiment.

[00:15:08] Speaker 01:
Isn't that how claims are construed?

[00:15:11] Speaker 02:
This court's precedent has said that even if there's a single embodiment shown in the specification.

[00:15:17] Speaker 01:
It depends in a particular case.

[00:15:20] Speaker 01:
If you look at this case, it talks about a spine, a very simple structure.

[00:15:24] Speaker 01:
And there it is.

[00:15:25] Speaker 01:
You say, no.

[00:15:26] Speaker 01:
We're going to include the legs.

[00:15:28] Speaker 02:
But I think you need to look at both the claim language and other portions of the specification.

[00:15:32] Speaker 02:
For example, the claim language defines the first short spine as extending from the floor to the top shelf and attaching to each shelf and providing structural support.

[00:15:43] Speaker 02:
That's what a leg does.

[00:15:45] Speaker 02:
The specification echoes that at page A53 in the appendix, column two, starting at line four.

[00:15:53] Speaker 02:
It describes the first short spine, and it says the exact same thing.

[00:15:57] Speaker 02:
The first short spine extends from the floor to the top shelf, attaches to each shelf, provides structural support, just like the legs, or what they call the side panels.

[00:16:08] Speaker 06:
And again, on page A55... I'm sorry, but why in the world would one think that these separately named pieces, which share at least one common feature, they start at the floor and they go up, are for that reason the same?

[00:16:29] Speaker 02:
Well, the claim doesn't recite legs, so... Side panels, same thing.

[00:16:33] Speaker 02:
Side panels, exactly.

[00:16:35] Speaker 02:
The leg, the claim is silent with regard to side panels or legs, so I would agree that if, you know, possibly if the claim had included two separate items, there may be an issue with saying that both of these separate items are the same thing.

[00:16:50] Speaker 02:
But here, claim one, all it says is first short spine.

[00:16:55] Speaker 02:
It says the first short spine provides structural support, extends from the floor to the top.

[00:17:00] Speaker 02:
So that's what we're left with.

[00:17:02] Speaker 06:
If they wanted to... Why is that not like saying, your left leg extends from the floor to your middle, so does your right leg, so your left leg must include your right leg?

[00:17:15] Speaker 02:
Well, I think the difference is that there's...

[00:17:20] Speaker 02:
a well-understood common sense meaning to left and right, whereas everyone knows.

[00:17:24] Speaker 02:
Same for spine.

[00:17:25] Speaker 02:
Well, not, I mean, the problem is that, so you're saying, they're saying, well, okay, in a person, your spine is your backbone, it's in the back center, therefore, in a table, a console should be in the back center.

[00:17:38] Speaker 02:
But there are other attributes of a spine that they're not equating over.

[00:17:41] Speaker 02:
I mean, your spine is hollow, and claim one, at least, does not require a hollow spine.

[00:17:47] Speaker 02:
your spine has a very specific shape with vertebrae.

[00:17:50] Speaker 02:
No, there's a picture.

[00:17:53] Speaker 02:
They're not taking that.

[00:17:54] Speaker 01:
The picture in the specification is not of a human spine.

[00:17:59] Speaker 01:
It's of the support going up the back of the device.

[00:18:03] Speaker 01:
So to say that it's got to be hollow with vertebrae is, I think, a stretch.

[00:18:08] Speaker 02:
Well, what I'm saying is that they're taking this one specific attribute of a human spine and saying that use of the word spine

[00:18:17] Speaker 02:
translates that attribute or implies that attribute in a table.

[00:18:21] Speaker 02:
What I'm saying is there are other attributes of a human spine that they're not carrying over and there's no explanation for why they're not carrying over.

[00:18:29] Speaker 01:
No, they have a picture of the attributes of the spine that they're claiming.

[00:18:34] Speaker 02:
But again, that's one embodiment in the specification that the board found was not limiting and there's no language in the specification that even comes close to limiting the claims to that embodiment.

[00:18:47] Speaker 01:
What sort of language do you think would be helpful?

[00:18:51] Speaker 02:
Like you were talking about with Appellants' Council, if they had amended the claims to make clear that the spine is in the center back of the console, that would have helped.

[00:19:01] Speaker 02:
If they said something in the specification definitively that the spine was in the back center of the console, that would have helped.

[00:19:11] Speaker 02:
Earlier, you were talking about with the Appellants' Council that they're saying now that they don't even want the term construed.

[00:19:17] Speaker 02:
In their briefing to this Court, at least on page 26 of their opening brief, they assert that a spine should be construed as essentially located support in the back of the Council.

[00:19:28] Speaker 06:
I took Mr. Stockwell to be saying nothing other than we simply have some rejections here.

[00:19:35] Speaker 06:
If you apply the ordinary meaning, you will reverse those rejections.

[00:19:41] Speaker 06:
And if you don't want to articulate a final construction, that's perfectly fine, because nothing turns on it.

[00:19:49] Speaker 02:
That's correct.

[00:19:50] Speaker 02:
I was just making clear that they have proposed it.

[00:19:52] Speaker 06:
Can I just ask you, I should know the answer to this with certainty by now, but if they amended their claims, would there be some possible intervening rights problems?

[00:20:03] Speaker 02:
Possibly, yes.

[00:20:06] Speaker 02:
I'm not sure of the timing of the settling of the lawsuit, the prior lawsuit.

[00:20:10] Speaker 02:
I don't know what other active infringement claims they have.

[00:20:15] Speaker 06:
But possible.

[00:20:16] Speaker 02:
There's always, yes, when you amend your claims during re-exam, intervening rights is always an issue that comes up.

[00:20:25] Speaker 02:
So I think that the specification and the claims really tell you what the first short spine is and where it is and what it does.

[00:20:35] Speaker 02:
And anything beyond that, there's really no evidence in the record to show that this specific location that they're asking for is necessary.

[00:20:45] Speaker 05:
And your point is that the legs do what the spec says the, quote, first short spine, close quote, does.

[00:20:53] Speaker 02:
Yes, if you even look on page 855, column 5, around line 31, they say that the first short spine, quote unquote, so cooperates with the side panels 4850 to support weight carried on the upper shelves.

[00:21:09] Speaker 02:
So they're saying that the spine.

[00:21:11] Speaker 01:
But it requires a short spine, however.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
I mean, what it's saying is that the spine and the legs together

[00:21:19] Speaker 02:
are the things that are supporting the table.

[00:21:21] Speaker 02:
And so they're saying that this is the functionality of the spine.

[00:21:25] Speaker 02:
This is what it's doing.

[00:21:26] Speaker 02:
This is where it is.

[00:21:28] Speaker 02:
It goes from the top to the floor.

[00:21:30] Speaker 06:
Just like your left and your right.

[00:21:32] Speaker 06:
They cooperate with each other to support.

[00:21:35] Speaker 06:
That doesn't mean they're the same.

[00:21:37] Speaker 02:
Again, I think that it's a different situation because left and right have inherent meanings that everyone knows.

[00:21:44] Speaker 02:
They're trying to treat spine of a TV console the same as an arm of a chair.

[00:21:49] Speaker 02:
Armor of a chair is something that's so well known and has such an understood meaning that you don't really have to say anything more to understand what the armor of a chair is.

[00:22:01] Speaker 02:
But here we have the spine of a TV console.

[00:22:04] Speaker 02:
It's not one of these anatomical terms.

[00:22:07] Speaker 02:
It's just widely accepted to have a furniture counterpart.

[00:22:14] Speaker 02:
So if they're going to use that term,

[00:22:16] Speaker 02:
They need to provide us some clarity on what the bounds of the term are, how far that metaphor should extend.

[00:22:23] Speaker 02:
I mean, for example, here, you know, in your body, your spine is above your legs.

[00:22:28] Speaker 01:
Well, in... No, you read it in terms of the specification.

[00:22:33] Speaker 02:
Exactly.

[00:22:33] Speaker 01:
And it's full of pictures of a spine going up the back.

[00:22:37] Speaker 02:
Well, that's, I mean, I...

[00:22:40] Speaker 02:
There's no dispute that the one environment shown has the spine in the back center, but I don't think that that's in any way limiting.

[00:22:47] Speaker 02:
They have not pointed to anything in the spec that requires that back center location.

[00:22:57] Speaker 06:
Am I right?

[00:22:59] Speaker 06:
I don't remember anything, but there was nothing, was there, in the board, I guess, either its original opinion or the rehearing or anywhere else, so just tell me, that identified a use of the word spine that was other than, not like cactus spines, but the actual kind of anatomical image that was something other than

[00:23:27] Speaker 06:
at least central and let's say even, is dorsal the word?

[00:23:33] Speaker 06:
Anyway, rear.

[00:23:34] Speaker 02:
No, there's nothing in the board decision that identifies me.

[00:23:37] Speaker 06:
I mean, I guess that's really my problem.

[00:23:39] Speaker 06:
It seems to me that there is so strong and a ordinary meaning conversation to the term that I'm struggling to figure out

[00:23:53] Speaker 06:
where the potential reasonable, broader interpretation could come from.

[00:24:00] Speaker 02:
Again, I think the claim language and the spec really tell you all the requirements of the spine, and there's nothing beyond that.

[00:24:09] Speaker 02:
I mean, they put in no evidence about what

[00:24:14] Speaker 02:
accepted meaning of this term in the art was, they don't even put any dictionary definitions in, they're just saying, well, spine means backbone, backbone means back center, end of story.

[00:24:27] Speaker 02:
I mean, there's just a lack of evidence here that the board had to go on, so all the board had to look towards was the claims and the specification, and the claims and the specification don't tell us anything about the

[00:24:38] Speaker 02:
the location other than an example of it being in the back center, which I don't think, I mean, the board didn't find was enough to limit the term.

[00:24:45] Speaker 02:
We don't think it's enough to limit the term.

[00:24:47] Speaker 02:
So I think there's just a, they didn't put in anything that would really give the board a sufficient reason to provide this pretty narrow construction what they want to avoid the anticipation rejection.

[00:25:07] Speaker 02:
So without more, I think that based on the claim language and the specification, the construction was more than reasonable.

[00:25:18] Speaker 02:
There's nothing further.

[00:25:19] Speaker 01:
Any more questions?

[00:25:20] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:25:21] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:25:21] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:25:22] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Mr. Foreman.

[00:25:24] Speaker 01:
Mr. Stockwell?

[00:25:30] Speaker 00:
I just have a couple of points.

[00:25:32] Speaker 00:
The reason we couldn't amend our claims or chose not to at the time was

[00:25:37] Speaker 00:
The litigation was still pending at the time, so there would have been an intervening rights problem.

[00:25:42] Speaker 00:
And so we went with, let's keep the claims the way they are, and we'll argue them based on the ordinary meaning of the words that are there.

[00:25:53] Speaker 00:
The only thing I think that we could have probably done, and this is in hindsight, is add a dependent claim to the side panels to maybe add clarity.

[00:26:02] Speaker 00:
But at the time, that wasn't done.

[00:26:07] Speaker 00:
But that would have just been a dependent claim.

[00:26:09] Speaker 00:
The dependent claim would have just clarified through claim differentiation that the spine and the side panels would be the same.

[00:26:17] Speaker 00:
But otherwise, without the dependent claim, the independent claim should be interpreted similarly anyway.

[00:26:33] Speaker 00:
I guess if you put a TV console or any piece of furniture in front of anybody and asked them where the spine was located on it, they'd be looking on the back.

[00:26:43] Speaker 00:
And that's just through ordinary meeting.

[00:26:44] Speaker 00:
And I think that's what this case goes back down to.

[00:26:47] Speaker 00:
And Saxton's legs wouldn't qualify.

[00:26:51] Speaker 00:
It's true that the spine in the 311 patent does provide structural support.

[00:26:59] Speaker 00:
That is an expressed limitation in the claim.

[00:27:01] Speaker 00:
that adds to the ordinary meaning of the term.

[00:27:06] Speaker 00:
The same with that it has to support the upper and lower shells.

[00:27:10] Speaker 00:
That's additive onto the ordinary meaning of the term spine.

[00:27:14] Speaker 00:
It goes with the interpretation of a short spine or a long spine.

[00:27:24] Speaker 00:
That's really all I have.

[00:27:26] Speaker 00:
Are there any more questions?

[00:27:30] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:27:33] Speaker 01:
The case is taken under submission.

[00:27:37] Speaker 01:
That concludes the argued cases for this morning.