🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <92308.153754SIMCOEE@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> SIMCOEE@QUCDN.QueensU.CA writes:
>Please help me settle this debate.
>
>I know that if an independent claim is accepted by the PTO, all subsequent
>dependent claims will also be accepted.

Not necessarily.  The dependent claim must be formally correct and must
introduce a further limitation (i.e. it can't be "A widget as recited
in claim 1 that does not include said element X.")

>However, if an indpendent claim is thrown out at trial, do all the
>dependent claims fall with it?

That depends upon what you mean by "thrown out."  If the independent
claim is found to be invalid because it was anticipated or obvious, it
does not necessarily mean that a subsequent dependent claim is invalid.
The subsequent dependent claim may introduce limitations that are not
anticipated or obvious.  That's often what you try to shoot for when
you draft the original claims so that the Examiner may tell you which
of the dependent claims would provide allowable claims if rewritten
in independent form.

>broadest independent claim infringes upon some other patent's claim
>(ie. it is anticipated by another claim) - then how can dependent claims
>that depend on the independent claim that is now invalid be valid?
>Wouldn't you say that they are anticipated as well (considering they
>are narrower)?

The question is somewhat ill-stated, but let me give you an example:

I have just discovered that an entirely new composition of matter,
gleepsite, makes a dandy electrolyte for batteries.  I write a disclosure
that satisfies all of the necessary conditions for making and using
gleepsite in the preferred mode.  I then write these claims:

1.  A battery, comprising:
	an anode;
	a cathode; and
	an electrolyte interposed between said anode and said cathode.

2.  A battery as recited in claim 1 wherein said electrolyte comprises
    gleepsite.

Is claim 1 anticipated?  Yes, by every battery ever made.

Is claim 2 anticipated?  Not at all.
-- 
                                                John Berryhill, Ph.D.