Late last week in Natera, Inc. v. NeoGenomics Laboratories, Inc. (24-1324), the Federal Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction ruling from the lower court that mostly prohibits NeoGenomics from selling its oncology test...more
Earlier this week, the Federal Circuit granted Meril Life Sciences safe passage out of the infringement storm — otherwise known as Edwards Lifesciences — continuing to chase it (at least for now). More specifically, a divided...more
Last week, the Federal Circuit issued another precedential decision on inventorship. However, unlike in HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corporation (22-1696) where the appellate panel found the purported inventor’s contribution to...more
6/14/2023
/ Appeals ,
Collaboration ,
Contributory Infringement ,
Corroboration ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Inventions ,
Inventors ,
Joint Inventors ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
USPTO
The Federal Circuit passed on Pure Hemp’s ask for attorney fees and sanctions in United Cannabis, Corp. v. Pure Hemp Collective Inc., No. 22-1363 (Fed. Cir. May 8, 2023). Agreeing with the district court, the appellate panel...more
Phillip Morris can’t seem to catch its breath. As discussed in a previous post, just a few weeks ago the Federal Circuit upheld the ITC’s ban on the importation and sale of Phillip Morris’s line of heated tobacco and...more
4/20/2023
/ Appeals ,
Attorney's Fees ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Motion to Amend ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Reversal ,
Vacated
In a recent precedential decision, the Federal Circuit shot down arguments from appellants Phillip Morris Products S.A., Phillip Morris USA, Inc. and Altria Client Services LLC (Phillip Morris) that challenged the ban on its...more
Patent owners worry about what they can and cannot publicly say about infringement of their patent rights. Accused infringers may believe that certain public statements by patent owners are actionable on the basis that such...more
Last week, in Personalized Media Communications, LLC v. Apple, Inc., the Federal Circuit left intact Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s ruling of unenforceability based on prosecution laches and deprived Personalized Media...more
The Federal Circuit recently reversed a lower court’s summary judgment that a medical device design patent was not invalid under the on-sale bar. As a result, the patent owner (Junker) lost the $1.25M infringement damages...more
2/24/2022
/ Appeals ,
Damages ,
Design Patent ,
Inventions ,
Inventors ,
Medical Devices ,
On-Sale Bar ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Reversal ,
Summary Judgment
Section 287 of the U.S. Patent Act gives a patent owner the ability to recover damages for patent infringement in two ways: (1) if a patented article is marked; or (2) if actual notice of infringement has been provided. The...more
Bot M8 LLC, a patent assertion entity, was unsuccessful in its effort to have the Federal Circuit reverse the lower court’s invalidity finding related to one of six different patents asserted against Sony in Northern District...more
As the Federal Circuit made clear a few years ago in Nalco Co. v. Chem-Mod, LLC, a plaintiff “need not ‘prove its case at the pleading stage.’” The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a plaintiff to plead facts...more
Contrary to some predictions, assignor estoppel did not suffer the same fate in the hands of the Supreme Court as licensee estoppel in Lear v. Adkins. In fact, the doctrine, which essentially boils down to limiting an...more
Last spring in Hologic, Inc. v. Minerva Surgical, Inc., the Federal Circuit ruled that the doctrine of assignor estoppel does not prevent an assignor from lodging a validity challenge of either patent in an IPR proceeding. In...more
Let’s face it, any litigation is expensive and a defendant that finds itself spending money battling claims against it only to have those claims later dismissed by the plaintiff is likely going to want to try to recoup the...more
Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit delivered ShoppersChoice.com the affirmation it ordered in Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC (ECT) v. ShoppersChoice.com, LLC. In doing so, the court...more
The Federal Circuit has affirmed infringement under the doctrine of equivalents in a number of cases over the last few years. Briefly, the judicially created doctrine of equivalents is intended to expose those who adopt the...more
By reversing the lower court’s ruling that the asserted claims were not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in Uniloc v. LG Electronics, the Federal Circuit resurrected Uniloc’s infringement suit against LG Electronics. It...more
In a precedential decision last week, the Federal Circuit held that CBS will not have to pay a $1.3 million infringement award because a podcasting patent was invalidated in an inter partes review (IPR) at the Patent Trial...more
1/20/2020
/ Audio Recording ,
CBS ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Jurisdiction ,
Jury Verdicts ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Seventh Amendment
On Wednesday, the Federal Circuit held that infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(g) does not require a single entity to perform, direct, or control all of the steps of a patented process for infringement liability to arise from...more
On Thursday of last week in Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. TCL Corporation, the Federal Circuit affirmed two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions (IPR2015-01584 and IPR2015-01600) finding that a single claim in...more
11/14/2019
/ Appeals ,
Declaration ,
Evidence ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Public Information ,
Substantial Evidence ,
Supplemental Evidence
Last week, the Federal Circuit confirmed that Idenix Pharmaceuticals will not be the proud recipient of what was previously regarded as the largest damages award ever recorded in a U.S. patent case. In fact, the majority’s...more
In a precedential decision that was unsealed last week by the Federal Circuit, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) was told that it erred in not considering evidence of copying when rendering its decision on obviousness...more
11/7/2019
/ Breach of Contract ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
L'Oreal ,
Misappropriation ,
Nonobvious ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Precedential Opinion ,
Prior Art ,
Trade Secrets ,
USPTO
Last week, the Federal Circuit revived a patent infringement suit brought by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der angewandten Forschung E.V. against Sirius XM Radio Inc. in the District of Delaware when it vacated the...more
10/24/2019
/ Commercial Bankruptcy ,
Extrinsic Evidence ,
Failure To State A Claim ,
Federal Rule 12(b)(6) ,
IP License ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Remand ,
SiriusXM ,
Sublicenses ,
Termination Rights
The legal meaning of the transition language “consisting essentially of” is well-established in Federal Circuit case law and is generally construed to mean that the composition or formulation (a) necessarily includes the...more
10/21/2019
/ Claim Construction ,
Definiteness ,
Indefiniteness ,
Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments ,
Novelty ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Prior Art ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 112