Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions

1. MOJAVE DESERT HOLDINGS, LLC v. CROCS, INC. [ORDER] (2020-1167, 4/21/2021) (Newman, Dyk, O'Malley)*    
   Dyk, J. The Court granted a motion by U.S.A. Dawgs, Inc. and Mojave Desert Holdings, LLC to substitute Mojave as U.S.A. Dawgs’s successor-in-interest in its appeal from a USPTO inter partes reexamination decision finding a Crocs design patent patentable. The Court explained: “Where, as here, the requester’s right has been transferred together with any liability for past infringement, there is no reason that the requester’s right to challenge the Board’s decision cannot be effectively transferred…. We hold that … the requester’s right (including its right to appeal) may be transferred at least when it occurs as part of the transfer of the requester’s past infringement liability.” Judge O’Malley dissented for the reasons given in the Appellee’s Motion for Reconsideration.
   * WilmerHale represents Crocs on appeal.
2. BIO-RAD LABORATORIES, INC. v. ITC [OPINION] (2020-1785, 4/29/2021) (Taranto, Chen, Stoll)  
   Taranto, J. The Court affirmed a decision of the International Trade Commission (“ITC”) that Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (“Bio-Rad”) infringed three patents owned by 10X Genomics Inc. (“10X”) and that 10X satisfied the domestic industry requirement of 19 U.S.C. § 1337. The Court concluded that substantial evidence supported the ITC’s findings. The Court also affirmed the ITC’s rejection of Bio-Rad’s affirmative defense that it allegedly co-owned the asserted patents. The Court explained: “To accept Bio-Rad’s contention after we give the required deference to the Commission’s factual (and, in one instance, procedural) rulings would require that we find joint inventorship simply because Drs. Hindson and Saxonov, while at Bio-Rad (or QuantaLife), were working on the overall, known problem—how to tag small DNA segments in microfluidics using droplets—that was the subject of widespread work in the art. We see no sound support for such a conclusion.”