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
Images of Sonix’s U.S. Patent 7,328,845 from google patents.
Federal Bar member attorneys may access the full case summary by Barnwell Whaley attorney Bill Killough in the February 2017 issue of Federal Circuit Case Digest. https://www.fedcirbar.org/IntegralSource/Case-Digest
Additionally, the full opinion may be read here.
B.C. “Bill” Killough is a registered patent attorney with Barnwell Whaley law firm with offices in Charleston, SC and Wilmington, NC. On behalf of his clients, Bill has obtained more than 275 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.
