Omnibus claims: substantially the same

In partly allowing Glaxo’s appeal, the Full Court (Allsop CJ, Yates and Robertson JJ) has ruled against an expansive interpretation of omnibus claims.

You may recall (here and here) that Reckitt Benckiser has a patent protecting its bottle / syringe combination for dispensing Panadol to children aged between 1 – 5 years old.[1]

Claim 1 claimed:

A liquid dispensing apparatus comprising a bottle, a bottle neck liner and a flat-nosed syringe having a plunger and a barrel, the barrel terminating at its distal end in a generally flat face having a diameter corresponding to the diameter of the syringe barrel and being perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the barrel, the bottle having a bottle neck in which is located the bottle neck liner having a cylindrical body sealingly engaged inside the bottle neck such that liquid cannot flow between the bottle neck liner and the bottle neck, the bottle neck liner comprising a sleeve comprising at its lower end an inward step located within the bottle neck, an aperture being defined inwardly of the inward step, wherein the cylindrical body and the sleeve are connected together with a web of material only at the upper end of the cylindrical body and of the sleeve, wherein the sleeve is formed with a flared portion at its upper end into which the distal end of the syringe barrel passes; wherein when the syringe barrel is inserted into the sleeve the inward step prevents the syringe barrel from protruding past the step and liquid cannot flow between the sleeve and the barrel, but can leave the bottle only via the aperture and thence the syringe. (emphasis supplied)

and claim 9 was an omnibus claim:

A liquid dispensing apparatus, substantially as described with reference to the drawings and/or examples.

Glaxo marketed two different versions of its competing product:

Glaxo Version 1
Glaxo Version 1
Glaxo Version 2
Glaxo Version 2

The trial Judge held that Version 1 infringed claim 1 but, because it had a narrower nozzle section at the spout[2] and so the barrel was not uniform along its length, Version 2 did not. The barrel of Version 2 did not terminate “at its distal end in a generally flat face having a diameter corresponding to the diameter of the syringe barrel”. The trial Judge, however, then went on to find that Version 2 infringed the omnibus claim because it functioned substantially in the same way as described in the patent:

The alternate syringe has exactly the same function as that described in the patent and the drawings. The alternate syringe is a flat-nosed syringe that has a distal end that fits into the liner and achieves a good seal with it so that it can draw up liquid without leaking from the bottle or the syringe. The mere fact that there is a corresponding tip on both the barrel and the reciprocating plunger used in the alternate syringe in the second product complained of should not be allowed to disguise that that product has taken the substantial configuration resulting from the patentee’s invention and its character for the dispensing of liquids from bottles without mess using an apparatus with a flat-nosed syringe: Radiation 60 CLR at 52; Raleigh 65 RPC at 160. The alternate syringe, as incorporated into the second product complained of, is not a substantially new or different combination

The Full Court dismissed the appeal from the trial Judge’s finding that Version 1 did infringe claim 1 and Version 2 did not. Importantly for present purposes, it allowed Glaxo’s appeal from the finding that Version 2 nonetheless infringed claim 9, the omnibus claim:

[79] … contrary to the conclusion of the primary judge, the use of the word “substantially” in claim 9 in the expression “substantially as described with reference to the drawings and/or examples” does not extend the definition of the invention to “the substantial idea” disclosed by the specification and shown in the drawings.

[80] The word “substantially” provides no warrant for departing from what the specification itself mandates to be the essential features of the invention. A flat-nosed syringe dimensioned as described in the consistory statement is one of the essential features of the invention. Thus, whatever work the word “substantially” is to perform in claim 9, it cannot transform a feature made essential by the description of the invention into one that is now inessential. Put another way, an embodiment that does not possess the essential features of the invention as described, cannot be one that is “substantially as described”. Thus, the word “substantially” in claim 9 does not do the work which the primary judge held that it did.

The Full Court pointed out that the description and drawings were a particular form of the first embodiment in the patent. It was plain from the consistory clause describing the embodiment and claim 1 that a barrel of uniform diameter throughout its length was an essential feature of the invention. All claims apart from the omnibus claim were dependent from claim 1. Claim 1 was the widest form of the claimed invention. Accordingly, the omnibus claim, which is a more narrowly defined claim, could not be wider than claim 1.[3]

Perhaps continuing the swing of the interpretation pendulum back towards the ‘literal meaning’ approach, their Honours also warned against too ready an assumption that some wording in a claim was just “a slip of the pen” rather than a carefully chosen limitation.

ps As Dr Patentology points out, s 40(3A) bans (or tries to ban) the use of omnibus claims in patents the subject of the new rules under the Raising the Bar regime; i.e., in broad terms, patents the subject of an application filed on or after 13 April 2013 or, if filed earlier, which had not been the subject of a request for examination before 13 April 2013.[4]

If you have a comment or a question, please feel free to post it in the comments section or, if you would prefer, email me.

GlaxoSmithKline Australia Pty Ltd v Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare (UK) Ltd [2016] FCAFC 90

[lewis]:


  1. Australian Patent No. 2003283537 (the patent) entitled “Improvements in and relating to liquid dispensing”.  ?
  2. In expert witness legalese, “the indented section at the distal end”.  ?
  3. As the High Court explained in [Radiation]: “But it is said that the words in the claim. “ substantially as described,” tie the claim to the particidar form of construction illustrated in the drawings. The effect of the words depends upon the construc­ tion of the claim as a whole, but “ in general the words exercise a limiting effect by tying ” the claim “ more closely to the preceding description ” (See Fletcher Moulton on Patents (1913), p. 128). They do not, however, limit the claim to the precise construction shown in the drawings but rather to the kind of apparatus mentioned and the method described in the specifications and illustrated in the drawings.”.  ?
  4. Someone made a more detailed attempt to explain the transition provisions in Lahore, Patents, Trade Marks & Related Rights at [12,000].  ?

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