Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 334: Listen and Learn -- Standards of Review (Con Law)
Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 160: Listen and Learn -- Standards of Review (Con Law)
Award Protests: Choosing the Forum
If I won my case, why do I need to worry about an appeal?
Recent cases show the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director's interest in using director review to address substantive issues like obviousness, not just procedural matters or changes in the law. Grants in these cases,...more
Director Review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) remains a hot topic in patent law. The Director first established an interim process for Director Review in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in United...more
The Federal Circuit in Sisvel International S.A. v. Sierra Wireless, Inc. (Fed. Cir. Sept. 1, 2023) (Prost, Reyna, and Stark) affirmed a PTAB decision finding anticipated and/or obvious certain claims of two patents directed...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has benefited, particularly after enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, from the deference to its factual findings mandated by the Supreme Court's interpretation in...more
Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - ONESUBSEA IP UK LIMITED v. FMC TECHNOLOGIES, INC. [OPINION] (2022-1099, 5/23/2023) (Moore, Clevenger, and Dyk) - Clevenger, J. The Court affirmed a district court decision...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of attorneys’ fees, explaining that when a district court denies summary judgment and allows a plaintiff’s case to proceed, the district court...more
With Labor Day around the corner and summer coming to a close, the Federal Circuit had a busy week with a lot of precedential opinions to pick from. Below we provide our usual weekly statistics and our case of the week—our...more
In Trustees of Columbia University v. Illumina, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (“PTAB” or “Board”) decision to invalidate five patents owned by Columbia,...more
Venue in patent cases has been a topic of recent Supreme Court (TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC) and Federal Circuit (In re Cray) consideration. Last month, the Federal Circuit again considered venue with...more
One of the more frustrating aspects of current patent-eligibility law is that it lends itself all too easily to mischief. In particular, given that the eligibility test under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as interpreted by the courts is...more
Last week we discussed the first Federal Circuit case added to the Supreme Court’s docket this Term, and we wondered when we’d have the opportunity to discuss whatever cases might be next in the pipeline. Lucky for us, that...more
It was a moderately eventful week at the Federal Circuit as the judges geared up for their August argument session and perhaps returned from their summer vacations. The Court issued 13 opinions and 2 orders on petitions for a...more
The Federal Circuit held recently that the "all substantive rights" test, used heretofore to determine the identity of the "patentee" for purposes of satisfying 35 U.S.C. § 281, should be the standard for determining common...more
One of the most notable recent changes in post-grant proceedings was replacing the broadest reasonable interpretation (“BRI”) claim construction standard with the Phillips standard used to construe claims in federal court....more
An indefinite patent description will pass muster when pigs fly. In HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corporation et al., C.A. 18-615-CFC (D. Del. June 24, 2019), the United States District Court for the District of Delaware held...more
Broad Claim Language and Unpredictability in the Art Lead to Non-Enablement - In Enzo Life Sciences, Inc. v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-2498, -2499, -2545, -2546, broad patent claims were invalid as...more
The Supreme Court in Halo Elecs., Inc. v. Pulse Elecs., Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1923, 1932, 195 L. Ed. 2d 278 (2016), relaxed the standard for a finding of willful patent infringement under 35 USC Section 284. The “objective...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Prost, Reyna, Taranto. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Summary: Where the preamble of a claim merely identifies an intended use and does not impose a structural...more
DuPont petitioned for inter partes review of Synvina’s patent, which was directed to a method of oxidizing a chemical using a specific temperature range, pressure range, catalyst, and solvent. The prior art disclosed the...more
The USPTO has published a final rule, changing the claim construction standard applied during post-grant proceedings (inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews, and covered business methods reviews) before the Office’s Patent...more
On September 10, 2018, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) determining that there was no interference in fact between the University of California’s (“UC”) U.S. Patent...more
The USPTO published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on May 9, 2018 seeking to change the claim construction standard for PTAB trials from the current broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) to the claim construction standard...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Moore, Hughes, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota. Summary: A district court must articulate a reasonable basis for denying...more
On April 2, 2018, the PTAB issued a final written decision in Fox Factory finding that the petitioner failed to carry its burden in showing the instituted claims were unpatentable as obvious. Fox Factory, Inc. v. SRAM, LLC,...more
The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s inter partes review decision declaring various claims of patent owner Thales’ U.S. Patent No. 6,474,159 (“the ‘159 patent”) nonobvious. In doing so, the Federal...more