IP(DC) Podcast: Patent Battles – New Patent Initiatives on the Hill & Notable CAFC/SCOTUS Decisions
Podcast: Patentable Subject Matter in 2019
As we move into the second half of the year, we are alerting you to 11 patent cases that you should look out for during the second half of 2024. This judicial mix touches on a range of industries and interests, such as...more
In 2022, the Federal Circuit definitively ruled that artificial intelligence (AI) systems cannot be named inventors or co-inventors on patent applications, reinforcing the longstanding principle that only natural persons are...more
Section 102 of the Patent Act holds that an invention may not be patented if it was in public use before the effective filing date of the patented invention. The public use bar to patenting is triggered if the invention is...more
The Court’s reasoning in Amgen v. Sanofi upholds the Federal Circuit’s long-standing requirement to enable the full scope of a claimed invention. Since the Patent Act of 1790, patent law has required describing inventions...more
In re: John L. Couvaras, Appeal No. 2022-1489 (Fed. Cir. June 14, 2023) In our Case of the Week, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeals Board decision that a patent application’s...more
On May 18, 2023, the Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) decision on enablement in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, 987 F.3d 1080 (CA Fed. 2021). The Court thus left in place a significant decision making it more...more
In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) addressed the enablement requirement under Section 112 of the Patent Act, placing this into sharper focus with the Amgen v. Sanofi case. This landmark...more
A panel of the Federal Circuit has again held that Commissioner Drew Hirshfeld had the requisite authority to act on requests for Director review of PTAB decisions during which the office of Director was vacant. Fall Line...more
On 2 March, the UK Supreme Court heard the arguments in Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, the latest in a growing line of international jurisprudence grappling with issues raised by the use of...more
Steven Thaler filed two patent applications naming “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Science” (DABUS) as the sole inventor. DABUS is an artificial intelligence software system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark...more
As part of the recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took steps to return to normal operations. It began requiring live oral arguments in August 2022 and, by November,...more
Historically, claim fees have not been payable at any time during the pendency of a Canadian patent application or term of the patent. This changed on October 3, 2022, and the present article discusses strategies for...more
The Federal Circuit has ruled that only human beings – and not an artificial intelligence (AI) can be considered an “inventor” under US patent law. (We wrote about this issue way back in 2017, by the way…)... ...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that an artificial intelligence (AI) software system cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent application because the Patent Act requires an “inventor” to be a natural...more
An upcoming change in Section 83 of the German Patent Act ("PatG") will close the gap between the duration of patent infringement compared to the duration of invalidity proceedings in Germany. From May 1, 2022, onwards, the...more
The new PatG provides an exception to the general rule that injunctions result as a direct consequence of infringement for cases in which an immediate injunction would result in disproportionate hardship when weighing the...more
In three previous blog posts, we have discussed recent inventorship issues surrounding Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and its implications for life sciences innovations – focusing specifically on scientist Stephen Thaler’s...more
Our previous blog posts, Artificial Intelligence as the Inventor of Life Sciences Patents? and Update on Artificial Intelligence: Court Rules that AI Cannot Qualify As “Inventor,” discuss recent inventorship issues...more
In a June 11, 2021 decision, Yu v. Apple Inc., a Federal Circuit panel issued a precedential decision, with a dissent, upholding the invalidation of patent claims to a digital camera on a motion to dismiss. The claims were...more
Update: Apotex has appealed. On March 8, 2021, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted Eli Lilly’s (Lilly) motion for summary judgment and dismissed Apotex’s claims under the Statutes of Monopolies, Trademarks Act, and...more
On May 22, 2020, the Federal Court held that an action under the amended Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations (PMNOC Regulations) relating to saxagliptin (ONGLYZA) would not be rendered moot by the relevant...more
Direct and Indirect Infringement Claims Allowed to Proceed Against Japanese Parent that Neither Imported nor Sold Allegedly Infringing Cellphones in the US - Semcon IP Inc. v. Kyocera Corp., US District Court for the...more
In April, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) proposed a draft framework for legislation reformulating the standards for determining patent eligibility under § 101 of the Patent Act. The framework largely...more
The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a 7-1 ruling in SCA Hygiene1 that eliminated the common-law defense of laches in patent infringement cases. The Supreme Court reasoned that laches is a “gap-filling doctrine” that does...more
In a highly-anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court held that patent holders can recover damages for infringement even when the patent holders unreasonably delayed filing a lawsuit. In SCA Hygiene Products AB v. First Quality...more