Courts will presume different meanings attach to different words when construing claim language. See, e.g., Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. v. U.S. Surgical Corp., 93 F.3d 1572, 1579 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (reversing lower court’s ruling that a “pusher assembly” and a “pusher bar” have the same meaning). But a recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision construed the claim terms “permeation barrier” and “substantially impermeable barrier” to “refer to essentially the same thing.” Air Liquide Large Indus. U.S. LP v. Praxair Tech., Inc., IPR2015-01075, Paper 11 at 8 (Oct. 26, 2015). In Air Liquide, Petitioner sought inter partes review of U.S. Patent No. 8,690,476 claims 1-12 and 15. Independent claim 1 of the ‘476 patent includes a step of “maintaining the stored hydrogen at a pressure between [certain limits], whereby the salt cavern forms a substantially impermeable barrier to the stored hydrogen…
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