Whether "A" or "An" Is Treated As Singular or Plural Depends Upon Context

Tivo, Inc, v. Echostar Communications Corporation, [2006-1574](January 31, 2008)[BRYSON, Plager, Keely] The Federal Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded a jury verdict that Echostar literally infringed the asserted hardware claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389, and infringed the asserted software claims under the doctrine of equivalents, and a damage award of $73,991,964.
QUOTE: "[I]t seems unlikely that a claim drafter would use a term of such biblical imprecision as "multitude" if that term were meant to have an important restrictive function in the claim. "
BRIEF: EchoStar argued that the claims required that the incoming MPEG stream be "separated into its video and audio components." The Federal Circuit agreed with EchoStar that the written description portion of the specification discloses such an embodiment, but said that the more difficult question is whether that embodiment represents the limits of the claims’ scope. The Federal Circuit found that the specification clearly refers to the separation aspect of the "invention" and not merely one embodiment of a broader invention. The Federal Cirucit said that "[a]s this court recently held, "[w]hen a patent thus describes the features of the ‘present invention’ as a whole, this description limits the scope of the invention." Verizon Servs. Corp. v. Vonage Holdings Corp., 503 F.3d 1295, 1308 (Fed. Cir. 2007)." The Federal Circuit said that because we construe the term "is separated" to require separation into distinct buffers and not to encompass mere logical separation, as performed by the Broadcom DVRs, we agree with EchoStar that the evidence at trial does not show that the Broadcom DVRs satisfy the "is separated" limitation of the hardware claims.
Echostar also argued that its devices did not assemble "said video and audio components into an MPEG stream." TiVo argued that Echostar met the "assembles" limitation because the reference to "an MPEG stream" must be interpreted to mean "one or more MPEG streams." The Federal Circuit noted that as a general rule, the words "a" or "an" in a patent claim carry the meaning of "one or more." This is particularly true when those words are used in combination with the open-ended antecedent "comprising." However, the Federal Circuti said that the question whether "a" or "an" is treated as singular or plural depends heavily on the context of its use, and the general rule does not apply when the context clearly evidences that the usage is limited to the singular. The Federal Circuit said that the language "in context clearly indicates that two separate components are assembled into a single stream". The Federal Circuit found similar support in the specification, and agreed with EchoStar that the claim would be interpreted by one having ordinary skill in the art to require the reassembly of the audio and video components into a single interleaved stream.
The Federal Circuit affirmed judgment of infringement of the software claims with respect to all of the accused devices. Because the damages calculation at trial was not predicated on the infringement of particular claims, and because we the Federal Circuit upheld the jury’s verdict that all of the accused devices infringe the software claims, it affirmed the damages award entered by the district court.