Panchev et al v. United States Patent and Trademark Office

Filing 32

MEMORANDUM OPINION and ORDER re 20 Motion for Summary Judgment. ORDERED that the Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment 20 is GRANTED; that Plaintiffs' Complaint is DISMISSED with prejudice. Signed by District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee on 6/25/2013. (rban, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA
ALEXANDRIA DIVISION

VLADIMIR PANCHEV. el al.

Plaintiffs,

Civil Action No. l:12-cv-641 (GBL/IDD)

DAVID KAPPOS, Director,
United States Patent and

Trademark Office,
Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

THIS MATTER is before the Court on Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment.

(Doc. 20.) This case concerns Plaintiffs' United States Patent Application 10/496,322 ("the '322
Application"), which seeks the issuance of a patent with claims directed at a method for treating
tumors with formic acid. (See Administrative R. Al (hereinafter Admin. R.], Doc. 13-3.) This
case presents three issues.

The first issue is claim construction. Plaintiffs assign error to the United States Patent

and Trademark Office's ("USPTO") construction of their claim term "tumor" to encompass
warts. Upon de novo review, the Court construes Plaintiffs' term language to encompass any
and all abnormal growths, including warts. The Court reaches this construction for two reasons.

First, the Court's construction is consistent with the ordinary and customary meaning of the term
as it is used in the claim language and correlates with contemporaneous dictionary definitions,
including those to which Plaintiffs cited during prosecution. Second, the Court's construction is