We mentioned earlier this week that "plain and ordinary meaning" (sometimes shortened as "plain meaning" or "ordinary meaning") is the default in claim construction. But what is it?
As the Federal Circuit has said, plain and ordinary meaning is the meaning of a phrase to a person of skill in the art:
The ordinary and customary meaning of a claim term is the meaning that the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention, i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application. . . . The inquiry into how a person of ordinary skill in the art understands a claim term provides an …
