New Claim Construction:
the court RECOMMENDS construction of the term to reflect this disclaimer, as follows: "an [oscillator] located entirely on the same semiconductor substrate as the [central processing unit] that does not require a control signal and whose frequency is not fixed by any external crystal.
The parties to this litigation agree that the disputed term must be limited as "an [oscillator] that is located entirely on the same semiconductor substrate as the [central processing unit]."26 Where they disagree is whether the term should further be limited to read as "an [oscillator] that is located entirely on the same semiconductor substrate as the [central processing unit] and does not rely on a control signal or an external crystal/clock generator to cause clock signal oscillation or control clock signal frequency."27
What Judge Grewal is basically saying is that PTSC "pigeon holed" itself during the application process with the USPTO because the invention was very similar to, yet very different, in scope and function to both Magar and Sheets. But they had no choice and it begs to ask whether the USPTO reviewer even understood the concepts (mute at this point) so they were forced to keep narrowing their scope. Basically they continued to narrow the scope in an effort to convince the USPTO to grant the patent, but purely out of necessity.
Grewal has offered a convincing argument in my opinion. As to the question I posed of whether or not he considers the historical legal opinions, the answer is yes. But he is also clear that he does not have to agree with them and in this case he did not.
Techies, what are you thoughts on the new claim? I would have to think that this was somewhat expected as it homoginizes all the other claim constructions but with Grewal's DNA.
