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Trade Winds: Federal Government Announces Next Commercial Offshore Wind Leasing Auction

Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.18.13

On December 17, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced a 60-day public comment period  for a proposed auction process designed to open nearly 80,000 acres offshore Maryland for commercial wind energy leasing. The announcement, which follows recent auctions of 112,000 acres offshore Virginia and 164,000 acres offshore Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is the latest in a series of actions by the federal government designed to increase wind and other renewable energy production and to facilitate the development of new clean technology industries generally (previously discussed here, here, here, and here).

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims.  Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution.  Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012).  The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication....