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On March 3, the Intellectual Property High Court decided that the patent at issue is invalid but the claim correction was valid.  In the process of invalidity appeal, the patentee of JP Patent No. 2814356 made a claim correction to introduce a limitation “an edge of the plate (14) (marked in red in Fig. 2 below) adjacent the excavator (9) is closer to the excavator (9) than a corresponding end (right end in Fig. 1 below) of the oil hydraulic motor (21)”.

As shown, the right end of the motor 21 in Fig. 1 is behind a triangular frame (indicated by “X” in Fig. 2 above), so that it is indefinite whether the right edge of the plate 14 is positioned closer to the excavator 9 than the right end of the motor 21.  Also, the specification is silent about the positional relationship between the right edge of the plate and the right end of the motor.
 
In determining the validity of the correction, the court relied upon prior arts disclosing similar structures and found that it was well know to the art that the quadrangle plate was designed to have a peripheral size within which the vibration device including oil hydraulic motor was confined and such plates had been widely used for a long time before the filing date.
 
Upon this finding, the court decided that the correction was simply to restrict one claim element into one of the well-known design choices and therefore it is hard to say that such limitation introduced a new technical feature into the claim.
 
http://www.courts.go.jp/hanrei/pdf/20100305113608.pdf