The recent In re Cellect decision by the Federal Circuit1 is significant for patent owners who have obtained patent-term adjusted patents in the same patent family. The court held that term-adjusted patents can be potentially...more
Last month, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published Supplemental Guidance for examination of design patent applications related to computer-generated electronic images. The guidance was provided to the patent...more
Last week, the Supreme Court granted Amgen’s petition for certiorari to reconsider the enablement requirement for genus claims. The Supreme Court will review whether the Federal Circuit panel in Amgen v. Sanofi improperly...more
As we reported earlier this year, Amgen filed a petition for rehearing en banc to the Federal Circuit, arguing that the panel in Amgen v. Sanofi improperly created a new and heightened test for enablement of genus claims with...more
As we reported last month, the Federal Circuit panel in Amgen v. Sanofi affirmed the district court’s judgment as a matter of law invalidating genus claims in U.S. Patent Nos. 8,829,165 and 8,859,741 that recite functional...more
In our earlier post, we questioned whether the Federal Circuit would continue to invalidate genus claims directed to biologics, and the answer is yes. Not surprisingly, the Federal Circuit panel in Amgen v. Sanofi affirmed...more
In a law review article entitled “The Death of the Genus Claim,” which published in the aftermath of the Federal Circuit decision in Idenix v. Gilead, 941 F.3d 1149 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the authors stated that, “in the past...more
On March 17, 2020, a divided Federal Circuit panel (“CAFC”) reversed a District Court decision and found that claims directed to a method of preparing a fraction of fetal cell-free DNA were patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. §...more
In October of 2017, the Federal Circuit issued an en banc decision in Aqua Products Inc. v. Matal, holding that patent owners no longer bear the burden of proving patentability of their amended claims. Instead, the burden...more
In a widely-anticipated decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held yesterday that the America Invents Act (AIA) did not change the scope of the on-sale bar to patentability. The unanimous decision, authored by Justice Thomas, held...more
Earlier today, the United States Patent & Trademark Office published its final rule package changing the claim construction standard used in AIA trials, replacing the broadest reasonable interpretation (“BRI”) claim...more
The PTAB has long been hesitant in granting motions to amend. But a recent review of motion to amend statistics shows that they are being granted with greater frequency—with a notable uptick since February. Although it’s...more
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Helsinn Healthcare S.A.’s certiorari petition to consider whether, under the America Invents Act (AIA), an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party that is obligated to keep...more
On June 7, 2018, the USPTO issued a memorandum to patent examiners based on the recent Federal Circuit decision in Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, 887 F.3d 1117 (Fed. Cir. 2018). The memorandum...more