In Re: Man Machine Interface Tech., LLC, No. 15-1562 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseThe patent, titled “Man Machine Interface via Display Peripheral” is directed to a remote control device for making selections on television or computer screens. Claim 1 requires that the device be “adapted to be held by the human hand” and a multi-function “thumb switch being adapted for activation by a human thumb.” On ex parte reexamination, the examiner rejected claims as anticipated and obvious, 35 U.S.C. 103, relying primarily on Japanese Patent 634, which discloses a desk-bound mouse with a locking key surrounded by four moving keys operable by a user’s finger to control cursor movement on a screen. The examiner construed “adapted to be held by the human hand” broadly to include various “forms of grasp or grasping by a user’s hand,” such as grasping the mouse disclosed in J634, and similarly interpreted the claim term “thumb switch” broadly, as “merely requir[ing] that a switch . . . be capable of being enabled/activated by a thumb but . . . not preclud[ing] another digit, i.e. index finger.” The Board affirmed. The Federal Circuit reversed the anticipation rejection based on improper claim construction, but held that, even properly construed, certain claims would have been obvious under J634. The court remanded for determination of whether certain claims would have been obvious under the correct claim constructions.
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