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Patent applicants must satisfy a variety of requirements to obtain a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The definiteness requirement forces applicants to describe their inventions in unambiguous terms so that other inventors will understand the scope of granted patent rights. Although the statutory provision for the definiteness requirement has been stable for many years, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments altered the doctrine. The Court abrogated the Federal Circuit’s insoluble-ambiguity standard and replaced it with a new reasonable-certainty standard. Various district courts have applied the new standard in different ways, indicating the need for further clarification. This Note argues that, following the establishment of the reasonable-certainty standard, courts may understand the definiteness requirement under a two-part framework of linguistic and physical definiteness, which are both required for claims to be definite. A claim fails the linguistic-definiteness requirement if it is open to multiple constructions and one construction is not clearly correct. Additionally, a claim fails the physical-definiteness requirement if it uses comparative terms or involves ambiguous spatial relationships not limited to a narrow range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the court case 'Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc.' concerning the interpretation of the section 112 of the U.S. Patent Act. Topics discussed include need of elimination of ambiguity in patent prosecution in the country; laws defined by the U.S. Trademark Office (PTO) concerning the issue; and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case 'Evans v. Eaton.'

The article offers information on judicial decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in several patent cases in 2014 including Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, Medtronic Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures LLC, and the Octane Fitness LLC v. ICON Health and Fitness Inc. It also discusses other patent suits in 2014 including Limelight Networks Inc. v. Akamai Technologies Inc., Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments Inc., and Brooks Furniture Manufacturing Inc. v. Dutailier International Inc.