Another district court claim construction reversed (Transonic)

In the non-precedential Transonic v Non-invasive Medical Technologies, the Federal Circuit reversed a district court claim construction as to the term "calculating." The patent at issue was US 5,685,989.

The CAFC cited US v. Telectronics, 857 F.2d 778, 783 (CAFC 1988) and Bai v. LL Wings, 160 F.3d 1350.

Festo even came up, and the district court was instructed to do a Festo analysis.

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US 5,685,989 has been cited by 39 US patents. One of the cites is by Jerome Lemelson, 5,919,135.

It claims no priority.

The first claim recites:

A process for determining in an arterio-venous shunt blood flow in a cardiovascular circuit, comprising:

delivering blood from a circulating system outside the cardiovascular circuit into an upstream location in an arterio-venous shunt connected in the cardiovascular circuit and carrying a shunt blood flow;

mixing said delivered blood with said shunt blood flow;

removing a portion of the mixed blood from said arterio-venous shunt at a location in the shunt which is downstream from said upstream location and delivering the removed portion of mixed blood to the circulating system;

changing a selected blood parameter in blood flowing in said circulating system to produce a distinguishable blood characteristic in blood which is delivered to the arterio-venous shunt;

measuring the amount of distinguishable blood characteristic in said removed portion of mixed blood; and

calculating the rate of flow of said shunt blood flow in said arterio-venous shunt from said measured amount of distinguishable blood characteristic.