The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s claim constructions and thus reversed the entry of judgment of non-infringement. The district court had construed the term “transmit” in a manner that required any communication to be initiated by the server. The court held that this construction was not warranted, because it improperly limited the claims to the preferred embodiment even though such limitation was not required in the claims and the patentees did not make any clear expressions of intent to so limit the claim’s scope. Thus, initiation of communication by either the server or the message playback device would be covered by the claims.
Info-Hold, Inc. v. Applied Media Technologies Corporation, Case No. 2013-1528 (April 24, 2015); Opinion by: Reyna, joined by Wallach and Taranto; Appealed From: District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Black, J. Read the full opinion here.
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