Many US practitioners intentionally use means-plus-function limitations sparingly and in very limited situations. The recent Federal Circuit case IPCom v. HPC (July 2017) highlights one potential benefit of means-plus-function limitations. Specifically, the PTAB (via inter partes reexamination) treated the limitation “an arrangement for reactivating the link with the first base station if the handover is unsuccessful” in claim 1 of the asserted patent as purely functional language as opposed to a means-plus-function limitation. Accordingly, the PTAB did not tie this limitation to the specific structure disclosed in the written description and found that any arrangement for achieving the stated function would fall within the claim scope under the broadest reasonable interpretation.

As a result, the PTAB found most of the claims (including claim 1) obvious over the prior art references. However, on appeal, the Federal Circuit construed the nonce term “an arrangement for” in claim 1, without further structure, as a means-plus-function limitation, and held that the construction of that limitation must be limited to the scope of the specific structural recitations found in the written description, even under the broadest reasonable interpretation. In other words, not just any arrangement for achieving the stated function would fall within the claim scope. As a result, the Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB construction of the limitation “an arrangement for reactivating the link” and remanded for reconsideration on that issue. Thus, one take home message for US preparation and prosecution practitioners is to consider the inclusion of means-plus-function limitation(s) in claims from time-to-time as tool to potentially preserve validity by limiting the reach of the broadest reasonable interpretation standard.