SRAM Corp. v. AD-II Engineering, Inc.

The court has taken words out of context, imported a limitation from the written description into the claims, and crafted a surprising result. The court’s biggest mistake is its failure to read SRAM’s December 6, 1996 amendment with care. The court hints that the December 6,1996 amendment was a response to an occasion where “[t]he patent examiner rejected most of the claims of the application for indefiniteness and several for anticipation.” Ante, at 400. The flaw here, however, is that most is not all; the only reason SRAM amended “support member” was to provide an antecedent basis — not…