Case: Patents/Claim Construction (Fed. Cir.)

The Federal Circuit reversed the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that challenged claims of Federal Express Corporation’s patent that claims methods and systems for tracking items are unpatentable as obvious over prior art, in an inter partes view by Qualcomm Incorporated. The appeals court reversed the board’s unpatentability determination for a patent claim based on its erroneous claim construction of the term “programming change.”