Dans là cause du United States Patent Appeals and Interference (BPAI) Ex parte Rodriguez, 08-0693, concernant la demande de brevet 09/392,341, le jury a appliqué la décision de 2008 du Circuit fédéral Arsitocrat pour rejeter les revendications de means-plus-function comme étant indéfinie pour ne pas avoir décrit suffisamment de structures dans le mémoire descriptif au-delà d’un “general purpose computer”.
For a patentee to claim a means for performing a particular function and then to disclose only a general purpose computer as the structure designed to perform that function amounts to pure functional claiming. Because general purpose computers can be programmed to perform very different tasks in very different ways, simply disclosing a computer as the structure designated to perform a particular function does not limit the scope of the claim to “the corresponding structure, material, or acts” that perform the function, as required by section 112 paragraph 6.
Selon Aristocrat:
The Appellants have failed to disclose any algorithm, and thus have failed to adequately describe sufficient structure, for performing the functions recited in the means elements contained in claim 10 so as to render the claim definite. Accordingly, claim 10 is unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph, as indefinite. Aristocrat, 521 F.3d at 1333.