There is one case on the U.S. Supreme Court’s patent heavy docket this term that has the potential to impact every issued patent. That case is Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments.1 Nautilus has the potential for such broad impact because it addresses how precise patentees must be in defining their invention; in patent parlance, the issue is called indefiniteness. Two compelling and competing ideals underlie the debate.
On one side is the inventor trying to describe in words an invention that, by definition, has never existed before. This already difficult task is somewhat at odds with absolute precision because an overly precise patent might superficially restrict the scope of the inventor’s patent. For example, if the inventor built a machine where two components were 2 inches apart, a patent drafter would be loath to limit the patent to claiming that these components were exactly 2 inches apart. After all, a competitor might be able to use the inventor’s idea by simply making those components 2.25 inches apart. Thus, skilled patent drafters typically avoid drafting claims—the portion of the patent that lays out the metes and bounds of protection—with overly precise language. This practice is largely sanctioned by the patent law, which has long recognized that unduly narrow patents do not provide adequate rights to incentivize inventors to disclose their discoveries.
