The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board ruling that method claims reciting a mechanism of action triggered by the co-administration of two known antihypertensive agents were...more
XY, LLC v. TRANS OVA GENETICS, LC - Before Wallach, Plager, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. Summary: Claims directed to improving a method of operating an apparatus...more
AMERICAN AXLE & MANUFACTURING, INC. v. NEAPCO HOLDINGS LLC - Before Dyk, Moore, Taranto. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: Mechanical method claims involving tuning...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s finding, based largely on the prosecution history, that disputed “wherein” clauses were limiting and therefore the grant of a preliminary injunction...more
The Federal Circuit has affirmed a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board finding nonobvious the claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,772,209 (the “’209 Patent”), which are directed to a method of treating cancer. The claims...more
Addressing the patentability of method-of-treatment claims, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued two decision finding such claims patent eligible. Natural Alternatives Int’l, Inc. v. Creative Compounds, LLC,...more
In Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland Heartlab, Inc. v. True Health Diagnostics LLC, (Cleveland Clinic II)[1], a unanimous panel of the Federal Circuit provided yet another guidepost illustrating what is not...more
In Natural Alternatives International, Inc. v. Creative Compounds, LLC., Appeal No. 2018-1295, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded a decision by the District Court for the Southern District of...more
In Natural Alternatives Internat'l v. Creative Compounds, LLC, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court decision that held the asserted claims invalid under 35 USC § 101 at the pleadings stage. I previously wrote about...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Judge Newman, Lourie and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Summary: Claims reciting only conventional steps to detect a natural...more
IPR Petitioner’s Initial Identification of the Real Parties in Interest Is to Be Accepted Unless and Until Disputed by a Patent Owner - In Worlds Inc. v. Bungie, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-1481, -1546, -1583, the Federal...more
As the readers of this blog are no doubt aware, patenting DNA defined only by a naturally occurring nucleotide sequence was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Association for Molecular Pathology v....more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before O’Malley, Reyna, and Hughes. Appeal from the District Court for the Northern District of California. Summary: Testing for the presence of a bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the...more
Hyatt v. Pato (No. 2017-1722, 9/24/18) (Reyna, Wallach, Hughes) - Hughes, J. Reversing dismissal for lack of subject matter description stating, “the exclusive jurisdiction of this court and the Eastern Virginia district...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
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a memo providing examination guidance on the subject matter eligibility of the method of treatment claims. The memo discussed the recent Federal Circuit...more
Inventors of methods of medical testing have had a rough time since the Supreme Court decided Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs. Inc. In the Mayo case, the Court considered whether a method of determining whether...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published a new revision to the Ninth Edition of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) (Revision 08.2017). This revision added a number of chapters...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Moore, Schall, and O’Malley. Appeal from the Northern District of Illinois. Summary: A plaintiff need not prove its case of patent infringement at the pleading stage. To the extent a...more
Withdrawal of Claims During Prosecution Can Trigger Prosecution History Estoppel In UCB, Inc. v. Yeda Research and Development Co., Ltd., Appeal No. 2015-1957, the Federal Circuit held that prosecution estoppel can apply even...more
The Supreme Court recently declined to hear several patent cases, thus leaving the decisions by the Federal Circuit intact. Issues that were not taken up by the Supreme Court include (1) whether performing patented methods...more
On April 5, 2016, the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments in Rapid Litigation Mgmt. Ltd. v. CellzDirect Inc., where the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held invalid claims directed to a “method of...more
Denying a petition for en banc rehearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirmed the panel’s decision that Sequenom’s patent claiming “a method of detecting paternally inherited nucleic acid” is an...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on remand from the United States Supreme Court, recently held that certain method claims in a patent owned by Akamai Technologies were infringed by Akamai’s...more