In re Tanaka, No. 10-1262 (Fed. Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseIn 2000 the applicant obtained a patent for an “alternator pulley” that uses a one-way clutch to improve the power generation efficiency of an automobile’s alternator. Two years later, the applicant filed a reissue application to add a single dependent claim, narrower than the entire patent. The application was denied on the ground that the specified error was not subject to correction on reissue because the broadest scope of the patent would remain the same. The Board of Patent Appeals affirmed. The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. Section 251, provides for reissue: "Whenever any patent is, through error without any deceptive intention, deemed wholly or partly inoperative or invalid, by reason of a defective specification or drawing, or by reason of the patentee claiming more or less than he had a right to claim in the patent." The section authorizes reissue to add the dependent claim; its omission could render a patent partially inoperative by failing to protect the disclosed invention to the fullest extent permitted by law.
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