The Federal Circuit has on several occasions taken the opportunity to address (and in doing so, flesh out) the requirements for Article III standing to appeal an adverse determination in a post-grant review proceeding...more
Elevation to Chief Judge in a U.S. Court of Appeals, particularly in the Federal Circuit, is frequently accompanied by an apparent mandate to place an imprimatur on the Court's decisions. This pattern has been shown...more
"Pigs fly!" "Hell has frozen over!" Or less dramatically, "Supreme Court affirms Federal Circuit decision!" all would be apt subtitles for any article discussing the Supreme Court's decision today in Helsinn v. Teva. The...more
1/23/2019
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The Federal Circuit recently reviewed yet another decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Amerigen Pharmaceuticals Ltd. v. UCB Pharma GmbH, and once again reviewed...more
The Supreme Court denied certiorari last week in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, in a case that asked the Court to review the Federal Circuit's jurisprudence related to the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112(a)....more
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston stuck again on Christmas Eve, giving the biotech patent community a rhetorical lump of coal in their stocking by invalidating on summary judgment claims directed to methods for...more
The plague, that variety of human ailments caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria, is mythic in human history, a nightmare disease carried by fleas infesting rats, a species that is omnipresent in human civilizations. Its...more
The Supreme Court changed the calculus on what conduct satisfies the "exceptional case" criteria for awarding attorney's fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285 in its Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness Inc. and Highmark Inc. v....more
On Friday, December 7th, the Federal Circuit handed down two opinions concerning the proper application of the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP). The first, Novartis AG v. Ezra Ventures...more
In Novartis AG v. Ezra Ventures LLC, the Federal Circuit addressed a narrow but important question regarding its jurisprudence on the issue of obviousness-type double patenting (OTPD). That question was whether its decision...more
The Supreme Court's recent forays into patent law cases have evinced a tendency towards statutory construction analysis, whether regarding substantive law or the procedural niceties of Federal Circuit review and U.S. Patent...more
Human evolution, once its occurrence was recognized over a century and a half ago, has long been a source of confusion, concern, and controversy (as well as fascination and wonder). The recent explosion in our understanding...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has released its 2018-2022 Strategic Plan, the first under new Director Andrew Iancu.
Director Iancu provides an introductory Message in which he cites the grant of U.S. Patent No....more
Growth is one of the defining properties of being biologically alive, and the biology of growth involves both cellular proliferation and differentiation from stem cells to one or a plurality of differentiated cells making up...more
Having a court grant a preliminary injunction is frequently an important strategic victory for a patent plaintiff in an infringement suit. The injunction not only eliminates a revenue stream for the accused infringer but...more
A certain amount of comment has recently been evinced from the patent bar by the voicing from several members of the Federal Circuit, including the Chief Judge, of their dismay over the number of patent cases coming to the...more
AIA Post-grant Reviews Not Precluded by Assignor Estoppel -
On Friday, November 9, 2018, the Federal Circuit handed down its decision in Arista Networks, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., deciding that the Board had erred in...more
One of the most powerful, visceral arguments made by the American Civil Liberties Union in Assoc. Molecular Pathol. v. Myriad Genetics, 689 F. 3d 1303 (2013), was that permitting Myriad and the University of Utah to have...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 10,113,167 today, October 30, 2018, to the University of California/Berkeley, directed to an aspect of its CRISPR technology (where CRISPR is an acronym for...more
One of the limitations of our judicial system is that it is inefficient in overcoming error. This drawback is most pronounced at the Federal Circuit, where precedential decisions can only be overcome by en banc...more
Last week, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in its appeal of the Federal Circuit's decision in Regeneron Pharmaceuticals v. Merus that affirmed the District Court's decision that the claims of...more
Ulrich (Uli) Laemmli, an illustrious professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, developer of SDS (sodium dodecyl sulfate)-polyacrylamide electrophoresis (PAGE) for separating proteins, and responsible for identifying...more
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Andrew Iancu gave the introductory keynote address at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association on Monday, and his talk provided the prospect of a...more
The Federal Circuit reversed a finding of non-obviousness in a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision in an inter partes review, in an opinion handed down Monday in E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Synvina C.V....more
The orange clownfish, Amphiprion percula, is an important denizen of many reef systems (and, thanks to Disney, Pixar, and Ellen Degeneris, one of the most famous fishes since the Billy Bass). One of thirty species of...more