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In 1995 the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ushered in a" sea change"'in United States patent law in Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc.(" Markman I') by declaring claim construction a matter of pure law reviewed de novo on appeal. 2 The court in Markman I achieved two institutional objectives: it removed juries from claim construction (and essentially from deciding questions of literal infringement), and it aggrandized power over claim construction at the appellate level. The Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit's Markman I decision, agreeing that judges, not juries, should construe a patent's claims. 3 The Federal Circuit subsequently confirmed the latter consequence of its Markman I decision in the bookend case Cybor Corp. v. FAS Technologies, Inc. 4 The court decided Cybor Corp. en banc as a result of the intracircuit split that developed in the wake of the Supreme Court's …