THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROSECUTION DISCLAIMER, and CONSULTING THE PROSECUTION TO CONFRIM THE CONSTRUTION FROM THE CLAIMS AND SPECIFICATION

Vehicle IP, LLC, v. General Motors Corporation, [2008-1259] (January 6, 2009) [PROST, Mayer, Bryson] NON-PRECEDENTIAL The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,535,743, which covers various aspects of a mobile navigation system.
DISCUSSION: The claim in suit, directed to a system for providing directions, required a notification region defined by a plurality of notification coordinates. The district court construed coordinates as a set of numbers used to locate the position of a point. The accused systems used a scalar – a single number representative of a distance. The Federal Circuit noted that the invention requires the claims require a comparison of coordinates, and since one of the coordinates was given in latitude and longitude, the plain language of the claims precludes the possibility that a coordinate can be a scalar, because a scalar cannot be compared with latitude and longitude. The Federal Circuit also found support in explanation of the invention in the prosecution history to distinguish the prior art. The Federal Circuit distinguished between prosecution disclaimer, which is invoked to limit the meaning of a claim term that would otherwise be read broadly, with claim construction where the prosecution history is consulted to see if it supports the construction already discerned from the claim language and confirmed by the written description.