The application of the written description requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) with regard to disclosed ranges is not always entirely straightforward or intuitively obvious, and this can particularly be the case when the...more
The University of California/Berkeley filed its opening brief to the Federal Circuit last week, asking that Court to overturn the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decision that there was no interference-in-fact between...more
Detection of paternal cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in maternal blood (the technology at issue in Ariosa v. Sequenom) was in a different incarnation the subject of an interference between professors at two universities; the...more
In a precedential decision the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision invalidating claims from Nuvasive's U.S. Patent No. 8,361,156 in an inter partes review instituted on a petition by...more
Diligence is a patent concept whose applicability was severely restricted under the changes in U.S. patent law created under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. Diligence is important when determining whether an invention...more
Before the Supreme Court's recent forays into the topic of subject matter eligibility in patent law, the most contentious line of cases (from the Federal Circuit) concerned the written description requirement of Section 112. ...more
CRISPR (an acronym for Clustered Regularly lnterspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which is part of a system for altering chromosomal sequences in situ in a cell in combination with a bacterially derived protein called Cas9,...more
Despite thirty years of efforts by the Federal Circuit to bring consistency and transparency to patent law (and the last dozen years of the Supreme Court's efforts to the contrary), in many respects patent law remains "full...more
Most recent academic and some popular assessments of the effects of the Bayh-Dole Act have been critical. This has been due in part to political opposition to licensing university technology (and the purported soiling of the...more
Earlier this week, Sequenom, Inc. filed its opening brief in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., appealing summary judgment that its licensed claims to a genetic diagnostic method for detecting fetal diseases and...more
1/31/2014
/ DNA ,
Genetic Materials ,
Genetic Testing ,
Human Genes ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 101 ,
Sequenom ,
Summary Judgment
The Federal Circuit revisited the extent of the safe harbor from the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting carved out by 35 U.S.C. § 121 in St. Jude Medical, Inc. v. Access Closure Inc. Unlike...more
It has long been a practice in prosecuting a patent application to keep a continuation application pending during the term of any granted patent. This practice is advantageous because it permits the patentee to pursue...more
Ever since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the courts have found it easier to render a decision that a claimed...more
Lurking in H.R. 6621, a bill entitled "To correct and improve certain provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act and title 35, United States Code" and introduced on November 30th by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is a...more