The court noted “the purpose of the definiteness requirement is to ensure that the claims delineate the scope of the invention using language that adequately notifies the public of the patentee’s right to exclude…” Claims may be found indefinite “only if reasonable efforts at claim construction prove futile…”

Moreover, the court noted that the absence of a “workable objective standard” without a subjective element renders the term “aesthetically pleasing” completely dependent on a person’s subjective opinion. And, when faced with such a purely subjective phrase, a court must determine whether the patent’s specification supplies some standard for measuring the scope of the phrase.

However, as disclosed in the ‘137 patent, “aesthetically pleasing” lacked a defined standard. And, therefore, “reference to undefined standards, regardless of whose views might influence the formation of those standards, fails to provide any direction to one skilled in the art attempting to determine the scope of the claimed invention…. Thus, the written description does not provide any reasonable, definite construction.”

35 U.S.C. 112 P2: The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.