The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment of invalidity for failure to meet the enablement requirement while affirming the lower court's determination of non-infringement.
The Federal Circuit stated that [a]n "artisan’s knowledge of the prior art and routine experimentation can often fill gaps, interpolate between embodiments, and perhaps even extrapolate beyond the disclosed embodiments, depending upon the predictability of the art," and a "patent need not teach, and preferably omits, what is well known in the art."
The court also agreed with McRO "that the Developers failed to identify with particularity any method of animation that falls within the scope of claim 1 and is not enabled" even though "[s]ection 112 requires enablement of “only the claimed invention,” not matter outside the claims." The court explained that "[g]iven our construction of the term "morph weight sets," however, both bones animation and the BALDI system (i.e., the two animation techniques) are clearly "outside the scope of the claims" and are thus "irrelevant to enablement.""
Read the case here.
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