Are Your Granted Patents in Danger of a Post-Grant Double Patenting Challenge?
The Briefing: A Prototypical Corporate Salesperson is Not Patentable
Podcast: The Briefing - A Prototypical Corporate Salesperson is Not Patentable
Ways to Amend the Claims in the Patent Invalidation Proceedings
Patent Right Evaluation Report in China’s Patent System
Stages of Patent Invalidation Proceedings
The Federal Circuit's inchoate attempts to fashion a consistent, rational application of the Supreme Court's recent subject matter eligibility jurisprudence, while understandably Herculean in view of the difficulties inherent...more
Nearly five years ago the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decided the controversial case of Ariosa v. Sequenom. In Sequenom the invention was a radically new method of fetal genetic testing by amplifying...more
Ever since the Supreme Court's decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories was handed down in 2012, diagnostic method claims have been routinely invalidated by the district courts and those decisions...more
The PTAB Cannot Approve or Deny Certificates of Correction - In Honeywell International, Inc. v. Arkema Inc., Arkema France, Appeal Nos. 2018-1151, -1153, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) does not have the...more
In a breathtaking decision, the Federal Circuit has ruled that a patented method of making an automobile drive shaft is not eligible to be patented because it is “directed to a natural law.” In so ruling, the court has...more
Just Because Something May Result From a Prior Art Teaching Does Not Make it Inherent in that Teaching - In Personal Web Technologies, LLC v. Apple, Inc., Appeal No. 2018-1599, the Federal Circuit clarified that the mere...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 Athena Diagnostics Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, LLC, the Federal Circuit has once again held that claims directed to a diagnostic method are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to ineligible subject...more
In a post-Mayo v. Prometheus opinion addressing the subject matter eligibility of diagnostic methods based on underlying natural laws, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s conclusion...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
In Athena Diagnostics, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit has provided another guidepost in the search for patent-eligible subject matter in the diagnostic industry. The Court upheld a...more
Federal Circuit Finds Claims Directed to Tabbed Spreadsheets Patent Eligible and Claims Directed to Tracking Changes in Documents Ineligible Under Section 101 - In Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, Appeal No....more
Knobbe Martens Partners Paul Conover, Irfan Lateef, and Curtis Huffmire presented "Patent Law Update for Medical Device Companies 2018" at the MedTech Innovation Summit in San Francisco, CA on November 28, 2018. This session...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
Priority Claims Cannot Be Incorporated by Reference - In Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals International Limited, Appeal Nos. 2016-2707 and 2016-2708, the Federal Circuit held that when a patent for a...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit refused rehearing en banc of two significant decisions regarding patent-eligibility under § 101 (Aatrix and Berkheimer) on May 31, with a majority of active judges on...more
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California invalidated several dietary supplement product and method patents as being directed to ineligible subject matter, even though they claimed products providing a...more
In Rapid Litig. Mgmt. Ltd v. CellzDirect, Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed a ruling of patent invalidity under Section 101, reviving a biotech patent to a method of preserving hepatocytes, liver cells, for medical use. The...more
In June of this year, the Federal Circuit panel in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc. invalidated a patent on the grounds of patent-ineligible subject matter. 788 F.3d 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2015). While the case is one of...more