Podcast: IP(DC): Inside Patent Reform Efforts, Anticipated Federal Circuit Appeals, and Patent Cases of the Upcoming Supreme Court Term
Is the Patent Litigation Boom Coming to an End?
A private sale may start an inventor’s one-year filing clock, but it likely won’t save a patentee from an intervening prior art reference. On July 31, 2024, in a precedential decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the...more
Design patents protect the ornamental appearance of an article. The protection granted by a design patent is primarily indicated by illustrations. Since the first grant in 1842, the United States Patent and Trademark Office...more
Upending decades of continuity in the world of design patents, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”), sitting en banc in LKQ Corporation v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, overturned the...more
As we have previously written about, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) has granted a petition for an en banc rehearing of LKQ Corp. et al v. GM Global Technology to rule on the...more
In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit found no abuse of discretion by the Board when it allowed Apple to expand its analogous art contention in its IPR reply, finding that the Board’s decision did not run afoul of the...more
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) recently upheld a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) that found some claims of U.S. Patent 8,815,830 (“the ’830 patent”) unpatentable as anticipated....more
On the first of February, in Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the CAFC”) vacated and remanded the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) on two inter partes review (“IPR”)...more
Section 311(b) limits inter partes review to “ground[s] that could be raised under section 102 or 103 and only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications.” 35 U.S.C. § 311(b) (emphasis added). An...more
Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - ..WI-LAN INC. v. SHARP ELECTRONICS CORPORATION [OPINION] (2020-1041, April 6, 2021) (DYK, TARANTO, and STOLL) - Dyk, J. Affirming related district court judgments holding...more
Earlier this month, in the precedential decision M & K Holdings v. Samsung Electronics Co., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the CAFC”) upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) in finding certain...more
Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - M & K HOLDINGS, INC. v. SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. [OPINION] (2020-1160, 2/1/2021) (Moore, Bryson, Chen) Bryson, J. Affirming PTAB decision that references qualified as prior...more
Inter partes reviews (IPR) are limited by statute to grounds of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 (novelty requirement) and 103 (nonobviousness requirement) and on the basis of prior art patents or printed publications....more
In Endo Pharmaceuticals Solutions, Inc. v. Custopharm Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that two patents listed in the Orange Book for Aveed® had not been shown to be obvious. Although prior art...more
In Southwire Co. v. Cerro Wire LLC, the Federal Circuit upheld the USPTO decision rendered in an inter partes reexamination proceeding that found Southwire’s patent invalid as obvious. Although the court found that the USPTO...more
On March 14, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit clarified, in a precedential opinion, that an anticipating reference must supply all of the claim elements, regardless of what a person of skill in...more
Disavowal can occur when a patent holder disavows the full scope of claim terms in the specification or during prosecution (e.g., through the doctrine of prosecution history estoppel). In either event, disavowal requires...more
On July 25, 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) held in In re Magnum Oil Tools International (Newman, O’Malley & Chen) that the burden of production to show unobviousness does not shift to a patent owner...more
In Intendis GmbH v. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., USA, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court decision that found infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. This case shows that the doctrine of equivalents...more
On February 11, 2016, in Nike v. Adidas (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit partially relaxed the hurdle for a patent owner to amend claims during an IPR or other AIA proceeding. This follows the PTAB’s own earlier partial...more