Today in David Netzer Consulting Engineer LLC v. Shell Oil Co., __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2016)(Lourie, J.), in the course of affirming a noninfringement ruling, the panel provides an explanation of the scope of a claim with an open (“comprising”) transition:
Citing Dippin’ Dots, Inc. v. Mosey, 476 F.3d 1337, 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2007), the panel explains that “[i]t is true that a method claim with the word ‘comprising’ appearing at the beginning generally allows for additional, unclaimed steps in the accused process, but each claimed step must nevertheless be performed as written.”
Regards,
Hal