BPAI issues informative opinion about broadest reasonable interpretation

The BPAI recently marked the 2009 opinion Ex parte Givens as "informative." As I noted in an earlier post (here), the BPAI marks certain opinions as informative in order to "explain best practices ... [and] address recurring problems."

In Ex parte Givens, the BPAI enforced the "reasonable" part of "broadest reasonable interpretation," the claim construction standard used in prosecution. The technology in Givens was digital signal processing, and the claim term at issue was "sub-band spectral subtractive routine." You can find a quick summary of Ex parte Givens here at The 271 Patent Blog. But here's the part you want to use as reasoning in your next argument over broadest reasonable interpretation: "Any interpretation that fails to give weight to “sub-band,” “spectral,” “subtractive,” and “routine” deprives the words in this claim term of their normal meaning."