Halliburton v. M-I LLC (E.D. Tex., Oct 18, 2006).
Halliburton decided to take advantage of the E.D. Texas patent excitement and sued M-I for infringing its patents directed to a method of drilling a borehole without losing “fragile gel” drilling fluid.
On motion, the district court granted summary judgment of invalidity based on indefiniteness. In particular, the court could not find any way to give meaning to the claim term “fragile gel.”
Datamize makes clear that adequate support in the specification can make a purely subjective claim term definite. However, when, as here, the specification provides only a subjective definition for a subjective claim term, there is no "objective anchor" by which skilled artisans can identify the bounds of the claims.
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