Federal Circuit Narrows Scope of Unified Communications Patent Claims

The Federal Circuit has vacated-in-part a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in Zilkr Cloud Technologies, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., narrowing the scope of certain patent claims.

The dispute centered on the terms 'request to provision' and 'activate' as used in Zilkr's unified communications patent. The PTAB had previously interpreted these terms broadly, but the Federal Circuit disagreed, concluding that this construction was too broad.

The court emphasized the importance of considering the specification's consistent use of a term when determining its scope. In this case, the court noted that while there may not have been an express definition or clear disavowal, the consistent usage weighed heavily in favor of a narrower interpretation.

This decision highlights the ongoing tension in claim interpretation between patentees and petitioners. Patent challengers often argue for broader scope to allow in more prior art, while patentees focus on the narrow technical aspects of their invention. In contrast, infringement litigation typically reverses these positions, with the focus shifting to whether the accused product infringes.