The Central District of California denied a defendant’s motion to dismiss or transfer plaintiff’s first-filed declaratory judgement action based on defendant’s later-filed patent infringement suit in Wisconsin. Though suit...more
In a series of rulings on a motion in limine, the District of Delaware recently distinguished between what qualifies as being incorporated by reference and what does not for the purposes of an anticipation defense. In short,...more
The District of Delaware recently denied a motion to dismiss a patent infringement complaint involving gene editing technology that sought relief under the Safe Harbor Provision of the Hatch-Waxman Act. Specifically, the...more
1/20/2025
/ Biotechnology ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Hatch-Waxman ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Life Sciences ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Regulatory Requirements ,
Safe Harbors
A district court recently refused to exclude testimony regarding consumer surveys conducted by a design patent expert, holding instead that the consumer surveys may be probative of how an ordinary observer would view the...more
The PTAB denied a petitioner’s motion to compel routine discovery that sought information from a parallel ITC investigation for alleged inconsistent positions taken by patent owner in the IPR. The board found that patent...more
10/30/2024
/ Discovery ,
Evidence ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Motion to Compel ,
Parallel Proceedings ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Semiconductors
The Western District of Texas granted a motion to stay a patent infringement lawsuit pending inter partes review not only because doing so would simplify the issues in the still-early litigation and reduce the burden on the...more
The Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal of a final written decision in an IPR based on issue preclusion where a district court had dismissed a complaint finding the patent claims subject-matter ineligible. The patentee had...more
The Federal Circuit recently ruled that a petitioner in an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding with related district court litigation cannot recover attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285. The Federal Circuit further held...more
In advance of a new trial to determine damages for patent infringement, a district court denied plaintiff’s motion to preclude defendants from introducing the terms of plaintiff’s settlement offers. The district court...more
A divided panel of the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement, holding that importation of two product samples into the U.S. was reasonably related to obtaining FDA approval...more
4/22/2024
/ 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1) ,
Dual Purpose ,
FDA Approval ,
Innovation Patent ,
Life Sciences ,
Medical Devices ,
Noninfringement ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patents ,
Safe Harbors ,
Summary Judgment
The United States District Court for the District of Delaware recently held that claims covering methods for evaluating organ transplant rejection are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
The patents at issue disclose methods...more
10/21/2021
/ Extrinsic Evidence ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Section 101 ,
Section 112 ,
Summary Judgment ,
USPTO
The District Court for the Northern District of Ohio dismissed Cybergenetics Corp.’s infringement suit after determining that the asserted claims—which recite mathematical algorithms for analyzing data taken from a DNA...more
In a recent inter partes review (IPR), a patent owner overcame a facially persuasive obviousness challenge by relying on evidence from an earlier litigation to establish objective indicia of nonobviousness.
In RTI...more
Declaratory judgment (“DJ”) actions have fallen out of favor in patent cases in recent years. In 2011, DJ complaints made up approximately 11 percent of all patent cases filed that year. Last year, they made up less than 5...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) recently reversed a preliminary injunction enjoining a patentee from making allegations of patent infringement and threatening litigation against...more
The Federal Circuit upheld a district court’s finding of inequitable conduct on the basis that appellants and its lawyers intentionally withheld material information involving the on-sale bar from the United States Patent &...more
Judge Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas has denied defendants’ motion to stay the post-trial phase of a patent infringement litigation pending ex parte reexamination where the request for reexamination was filed four...more
3/6/2020
/ Administrative Remedies ,
Collateral Attack ,
Ex Partes Reexamination ,
Jury Verdicts ,
Motion To Stay ,
Patent Act ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Post Trial Motions ,
USPTO
Chief Judge Stark granted a patent owner’s motion for summary judgment of inter partes review (IPR) estoppel, holding that obviousness defenses based on a prior art product could not be asserted because a prior art...more
2/3/2020
/ Estoppel ,
Evidence ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Printed Publications ,
Prior Art ,
Summary Judgment
A Central District of California judge recently granted summary judgment of no obviousness based on inter partes review (IPR) estoppel because the only prior art references used to challenge patent validity could have been...more
1/31/2020
/ Estoppel ,
Final Written Decisions ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Validity ,
Patents ,
Printed Publications ,
Prior Art ,
Summary Judgment
Chief Judge Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas has denied a motion seeking foreign discovery from a third party pursuant to the Hague Convention, holding that the movant waited too long to seek such discovery. The...more
A district court has denied a patent owner’s motion to strike wholesale a defendant’s affirmative defense of invalidity. The key issue in the motion to strike was the application of the estoppel provision of 35 U.S.C. §...more
11/13/2019
/ Affirmative Defenses ,
Estoppel ,
Evidence ,
Final Written Decisions ,
FRCP 12(f) ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Motion To Strike ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pleadings ,
Post-Grant Review ,
Prior Art ,
Question of Fact ,
Section 101
A district court has denied a request to amend patent infringement contentions to add claims obtained through ex parte reexamination after the case had been substantially narrowed through a parallel inter partes review (IPR)...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has rejected a patent owner’s argument that a forum selection clause found in a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) barred the Board from instituting a petition for inter partes review...more
10/21/2019
/ Equitable Estoppel ,
Forum Selection ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Issue Preclusion ,
Motion to Transfer ,
Non-Disclosure Agreement ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Samsung
A magistrate judge determined that a prevailing party in a district court litigation could be entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees based solely on conduct during an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding.
In September...more
A Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) panel has determined that emailing a proposed amended complaint is not “service of a complaint” under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b).
On January 23, 2018, Aristocrat Technologies, Inc....more