Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - MEDYTOX, INC. v. GALDERMA S.A. [OPINION] (2022-1165, 6/27/2023) (Dyk, Reyna, and Stark) - Reyna, J. The Court affirmed a decision by the PTAB in a post-grant review denying an...more
A Construction That Eliminates the Entire Scope of Dependent Claims Should Be Avoided - Littelfuse, Inc. v. Mersen USA Ep Corp., Appeal No. 21-2013, the Federal Circuit vacated a claim construction that violated the doctrine...more
Last week, the Federal Circuit affirmed imposition of an exclusion order under 19 U.S.C. § 1337 (Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930) by the Federal Trade Commission against 10X Genomyx (an intervenor in this appeal) over...more
Expiration of a Patent Does Not Always Trigger Application of Phillips Standard on IPR Appeal - In Immunex Corporation v. Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC, Appeal No. 19-1749, the Federal Circuit held that expiration of a patent...more
TECSEC, INC., v. ADOBE INC. Before Prost, Reyna, and Taranto. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Summary: Even if it would be objectively reasonable to view a defendant’s conduct as...more
The PTAB Cannot Approve or Deny Certificates of Correction - In Honeywell International, Inc. v. Arkema Inc., Arkema France, Appeal Nos. 2018-1151, -1153, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) does not have the...more
Assignor Estoppel Does Not Apply in the IPR Context - In Arista Networks, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-1525, 2017-1577, the Federal Circuit held that the plain language of 35 U.S.C. § 311(a) unambiguously...more
On March 7, 2018, the Federal Court upheld the validity of Kennedy’s patent for a use of infliximab (Janssen’s REMICADE) (Patent No. 2,261,630 [the “630 patent”]), and granted Kennedy’s counterclaim that Hospira’s biosimilar...more
Arbitration - Waymo v. Uber Technologies, 870 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2017) - Waymo sued Uber and others for trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement. Uber contends that Waymo should be compelled to...more
In EmeraChem v Volkswagen the Circuit reverses a determination of obviousness because the ?Board did not provide the patentee with an adequate opportunity to address a prior art reference ?that formed a principal basis for...more
This paper is based on reports on precedential patent cases decided by the Federal Circuit distributed by Peter Heuser on a weekly basis. ...more
In a non-precedential decision issued in Braintree Labs., Inc. v. Breckenridge Pharmaceutical, Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Breckenridge, and...more
Update to TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, Case No. 16-341 (May 22, 2017) - In an 8-0 opinion written by Justice Thomas (Justice Gorsuch did not participate), the Supreme Court rules that a defendant...more
PTAB’s Final Written Decision in IPR Must Explain Its Basis for a Motivation to Combine References - In In Re: Nuvasive, Inc., Appeal No. 2015-1670, the Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s obviousness finding in an IPR,...more
The patent case between Commil and Cisco, a case that made new law at the Supreme Court on the issue of the intent requirement in cases of induced infringement allegations, came to an end with a whimper on remand back to the...more
Commil USA, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 1920 (May 26, 2015) - ..Does a defendant’s belief that a patent is invalid serve as a defense to charges of inducing infringement? NO - ..Inducement requires...more
After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its ninth annual list of top patent stories. For 2015, we identified twenty stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe...more
California’s Eraser Law: What IP Attorneys and Owners Need to Know - Hector recently graduated from UC Berkeley and is anxious about his upcoming job interview. He is about to enter the adult world. But he has also got...more
In recent years, Congress has devoted a great deal of attention to patent reform. Those efforts led in 2011 to passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), which was the most extensive revision of the patent laws in...more
Congress v SCtPatent litigation reform has been on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee agenda, with the recent reintroduction of legislation seeking to address patent litigation abuses and a hearing examining recent U.S....more
With the advent of the America Invents Act (AIA), public perception of frivolous patent litigation, frequently surrounding cases filed by non-practicing entities (NPEs), has received increasing legislative attention. Although...more
Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court delivered unanimous opinions in two separate cases addressing questions of patent law, Limelight Networks v. Akamai Technologies (on induced infringement) and Nautilus v....more
On June 2, 2014, the Supreme Court decided two closely-watched patent cases, unanimously reversing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and making it easier to defend some claims of patent infringement....more
IP continues to be a hot area of the law at the Supreme Court, with many IP cases recently argued or scheduled for argument in 2014. Below is a quick glimpse at several of these cases, including the potential impact of...more