Ex parte Schulhauser - Patentable Weight of Conditional Claim Language
Intellectual Property (IP) Law updates: It has been consistently recognized in Office Actions and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions that conditional claim language does not carry any patentable weight. For example, multiple Office Actions have indicated that a step of a method claim does not constitute a patentably distinguishable limitation against applied art if the step is performed when a condition is met. A precedential PTAB decision, Ex parte Schulhause
