“Air Quality” Renders Claims Invalid

Posted on | August 4, 2008 | No Comments

2008-1482 Purechoice v. Honeywell
ED/TX 06-cv-244
Judge T. John Ward

Purechoice appeals from the judgment of Judge Ward construing certain claim terms of RE38,985 as ambiguous and the claims invalid for indefiniteness.  The patent relates to a remote environmental monitoring system that collects air quality data about a site.

The terms at issue are "environmental air quality" and "non-weather air quality."  As Michael Smith from EDTexweblog wrote:

This opinion started life as Judge Ward’s claims construction opinion,
but right about page four things went way, way south for the plaintiff
when the Court wrote that "it is necessary to consider only three of
the terms in dispute. Two of these terms are insolubly ambiguous and
render the independent claims invalid. Thus, construction of additional
terms is unnecessary."
Yikes!

Claim 1 of the ‘985 states, in part (italics in original):

An air quality monitoring system comprising:
a data acquisition system for collecting air quality data at a data acquisition site, said data acquisition system including:
at least one sensor for measuring environmental air quality data;
a second plurality air quality sensor adapted to measure non-weather data;
a data storage device coupled to the sensor for storing data measured by the sensor. . . .

The court first construed the term "air quality" to mean the "concentration of pollutants or contaminates in the air."  The term was construed to not include meteorological, climate or comfort-related variables such as temperature and humidity."

With this term construed, the court turned to the "environmental air quality" and non-weather air quality"–terms added by amendment following undocumented telephone interviews during reexamination.

After taking the patent owner to task for failing to comply with 37 C.F.R. § 1.560(b) (requiring the filing of a written statement after an interview), the court found the claims indefinite and incapable of construction.  Because "air quality" could not include "environmental" variables, the term "environmental air quality" could not be construed.  The court adopted the same reasoning for "non-weather air quality."

More reading:

Claim Construction

Counsel:

Purechoice: Marshall Gerstein & Borun, Chicago (Bradford P Lyerla, Benjamin T Horton, Margaret Lynn Begalle, Thomas L Duston) and Ireland Carroll & Kelley, Tyler (Otis W Carroll, Jr
., Deborah J Race).

Honeywell: McDermott Will & Emery (David M Stein, Fay E Morisseau, Michael Dru Montgomery, Michael R O’Neill) and The Heartfield Law Firm, Beaumont (J Thad Heartfield).

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