IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Rejection affirmed in pet food container patent application, (Jan 15, 2026)

By Kevin M. Finson, J.D.

The PTAB had properly construed “configured to” and “configured for” language as requiring only that the specified components be capable of performing the specified tasks.

The owner of a pet food container patent application failed to show any error in the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s claim construction in affirming an examiner’s rejection of several claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has determined. Claim language requiring that components of the pet food container be “configured” to perform certain tasks were properly construed as merely requiring that they be “capable” of doing so; there was no restrictive language in the claims or specification which required that they be specifically designed to carry out those tasks (In re Blue Buffalo Enterprises, Inc., No. 2024-1611, (Fed. Cir. Jan. 14, 2026)).

Blue Buffalo Enterprises, Inc. (Blue Buffalo) was the applicant under U.S. Patent Application No. 17/136,152 (the ’152 application) which claimed a packaging container for wet pet food that contained a sidewall which was “configured to be readily deformable” by a human hand so as to allow food to be expressed from the container, and a tool portion which included regularly spaced projections “configured for use” in breaking up or tenderizing the pet food. The examining attorney rejected claims 1 and 3-12 on the ground of obviousness, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed. Blue Buffalo appealed, challenging the Board’s claim construction.

Claim construction. Blue Buffalo argued that the Board erred in construing the terms “configured to” and “configured for” from the claims about deformability of the sidewall and breaking up of food by the tool portion of the container as merely “capable of” performing those functions, rather than interpreting them more restrictively as “specifically designed to” perform those functions. Blue Buffalo relied on two prior cases in which the Federal Circuit had required a more restrictive interpretation for similar language, but the court found that in each of those cases there had been additional details or context from the specification requiring that more restrictive construction. The language “configured to” or “configured for” alone, without more, was not sufficient to imply anything more than “capable of” performing the identified function.

Because Blue Buffalo did not challenge the Board’s obvious determination under the affirmed claim construction, the Federal Circuit affirmed the decision of the Board.

The Case is No. 24-1611.

Judge: Moore, K.

Attorneys: B. Delano Jordan (Jordan IP Law, LLC) for Blue Buffalo Enterprises, Inc. Monica Barnes Lateef, Office of the Solicitor, USPTO for John A Squires.

Companies: Blue Buffalo Enterprises, Inc.

Cases: Patent FedCirNews USPTO