The Power and Limits of Judicial Claim Correction

by Dennis Crouch

The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s indefiniteness holding, ruling that courts have authority to correct an obvious claim error through claim construction where the error is evident on the face of the patent and only one reasonable correction exists. Canatex Completion Solutions, Inc. v. Wellmatics, LLC, No. 2024-1466 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 12, 2025).  The court relied upon its own prior precedent and referred back to the foundational case of I.T.S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Co., 272 U.S. 429 (1926) that permits judicial correction — while distinguishes Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Weston, Inc., 358 F.3d 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (declining to correct).

Canatex owns U.S. Patent No. 10,794,122, which claims a releasable connection device used in oil and gas wells. The device included two parts (“first part” and “second part”) that lock together during normal operations but can be separated. All three asserted independent claims (1, 7, and 13) contain language stating that a locking piston moves “to release the connection profile of the second part.” The problem is that the phrase “the connection profile of the second part” had no antecedent basis in the claim.  Rather, the prior portion of the claim identified “a connection profile of the first part.”

When defendants challenged the claims as indefinite for lack of antecedent basis, Canatex argued that “second” was an obvious error that should be construed as “first,” pointing to the claim language and specification showing that only the first part has a connection profile and that this is what gets released when the two parts disconnect. The S.D. Tex. Judge Alfred Bennett rejected the patentee’s argument and instead found the claims invalid as indefinite.

While the appeal was pending, the patentee sought a certificate of correction from the USPTO to change “second” to “first.” But the office rejected the petition, finding that the requested correction was “more than a clerical or typographical mistake.”

The I.T.S. Rubber Foundation for Judicial Correction