{"id":815,"date":"2021-02-25T10:42:52","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T10:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/?p=815"},"modified":"2022-08-10T07:36:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T07:36:47","slug":"means-plus-functions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/means-plus-functions\/","title":{"rendered":"LQ PatentCast: ZeroClick, LLC v. Apple Inc."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"Podcast\"><iframe style=\"border: none;\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/7403999\/height\/360\/theme\/standard\/autoplay\/no\/autonext\/no\/thumbnail\/yes\/preload\/no\/no_addthis\/no\/direction\/backward\/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"360\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-dashlane-frameid=\"868\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although\u202fZeroClick&#8217;s\u202ffinger gesture patents were\u202ftemporarily brought back to life on appeal, Apple has ample avenues to kill it off permanently on remand back to the trial court in\u202fthe Northern District of California. \u202fThe\u202fpatent, which was\u202fdrafted pro se by a doctor who wanted to improve the patient charting process\u202fwithout having to click on a pointer, was not invalid on the ground that it should be interpreted in means plus function form (if it were so interpreted, it would likely have stayed dead). Apple did not appear worried.<\/p>\n<p>Apple\u202fappears to have simply used the opportunity on a relatively weak patent to try to undermine a huge swath of all software patents that might have been subject to means plus function rules. \u202fHad Apple been successful, many more software patents would have been put on life support.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Federal Circuit reversed Apple&#8217;s win below, and the result is that software patent claims are more likely to survive if they recite terms\u202flike &#8220;User Interface Code&#8221; or &#8220;Program Code,&#8221; which\u202fmakes\u202fthem more likely to be considered sufficiently definite structure (like &#8220;circuit&#8221; is for hardware), and\u202fless likely to fall under the more challenging means plus function rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: Although\u202fZeroClick&#8217;s\u202ffinger gesture patents were\u202ftemporarily brought back to life on appeal, Apple has ample avenues to kill it off permanently on remand back to the trial court in\u202fthe Northern District of California. \u202fThe\u202fpatent, which was\u202fdrafted pro se by a doctor who wanted to improve the patient charting process\u202fwithout having to click on a pointer, was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lqp-patentcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thompsonpatentlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}