Continental Circuits v. Intel Corporation On February 9, 2019, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the District Court’s decision of non-infringement, finding that the District Court erred in its claim construction.  Continental sued Intel and its supplier with patents directed to a process of forming a unique surface structure to prevent delamination and blistering of multi-layer electric devices.  The District Court construed Continental’s independent claims to require that the surface etching process be a “repeated desmear process”, although the term repeated was not in the claim, relying upon the specification which taught a double desmearing process and statements made by Continental during prosecution.  The Federal Circuit found no disclaimer of a single desmear process, holding that “[t]o disavow claim scope, the specification must contain ‘expressions of manifest exclusion or restriction, representing a clear disavowal of claim scope.”  Further, the court found that negotiation between the applicant and the PTO “lacks the clarity of the specification and is less useful for claim construction purposes.”