The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that Grit Energy has standing to appeal because Oren can still pursue the claims of infringement since the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice and the statute of limitations has not yet run.
The Federal Circuit also vacated the decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board finding that Grit Energy failed to meet its burden of showing that the claims are unpatentable in an inter partes review.
In construing one of the prior art references (i.e., Constantin), the Federal Circuit stated that "Constantin expressly describes the referenced embodiment as a “non-limiting example." The claims are broader than what is depicted by the non-limiting embodiment. That Constantin’s claims include references to a narrower non-limiting example serves not to limit the disclosure provided by the claims to that non-limiting example, but rather to map the embodiment to the claims. The mere fact that a non-limiting example was mapped to Constantin’s claim 5 does not detract from its clear disclosure that the stud is “provided on one of the shutter blades” and the orifice is provided on “the blade of the other shutter.”
Read the case here.