In re: CSB-Sys. Int’l, Inc.

CSB’s 953 patent, issued in 1997, is directed to a circuit arrangement for integrating an electronic data processing (EDP) system with telephone systems connected to an integrated services digital network (ISDN) telephone network. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld an examiner’s rejection of all claims of the 953 patent as unpatentable over the prior art during an ex parte reexamination. The Federal Circuit affirmed. While the Board should have applied the “Phillips” standard of claim construction rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation standard used by the examiner because the 953 patent expired during the reexamination, its claim construction was correct even under the Phillips standard. There was no support for limiting the broad claim term “personal computer” in the patent to exclude personal computers running software to emulate terminals. In the context of the 953 patent, a personal computer is defined by its hardware and computing capability, not by the software it happens to run at a point in time. View "In re: CSB-Sys. Int'l, Inc." on Justia Law