This is good for us, right? Effective November

This is good for us, right?

Effective November 13, 2018, the USPTO’s new final rule will change the how the PTAB construes claims, moving from the broadest reasonable interpretation (“BRI”) to the standard articulated in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc) and its progeny — the claim construction standard applied in Federal courts. This change will apply prospectively to all IPR, PGR, and CBM petitions filed on or after the November 13 effective date.
The PTAB’s new final rule summarizes the Phillips standard and states that a claim in IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings will be construed “in accordance with the ordinary and customary meaning of such claim as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art and the prosecution history.” As such, claim constructions in these proceedings will now explicitly consider “the claim language itself, the specification, the prosecution history of the patent, and extrinsic evidence, among other things...” In rare circumstances where claim language remains ambiguous in light of the intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, the final rule also states that the Office will apply the doctrine of construing claims to preserve validity.