Ways to Amend the Claims in the Patent Invalidation Proceedings
On December 16, in Adasa Inc. v. Avery Dennison Corporation, the Federal Circuit upheld patentability of claims reciting an RFID transponder with storage for a particular type of serial number—affirming the district court’s...more
The Federal Circuit has ruled that the definition of a claim term in a patent incorporated by reference into the patent at issue doesn’t limit the claims in the patent at issue. In Finjan LLC v. ESET, LLC, Finjan sued...more
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit considered whether the Patent Commissioner, on assuming the role of the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) Director, can constitutionally evaluate the rehearing of...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board (Board) ruling, based on a written description analysis, that certain claims were invalid as anticipated by an earlier priority...more
Earlier this year, and almost one year to the day (January 17, 2019) that the Opposition Division (OD) of the European Patent Office revoked in its entirety European Patent No. EP 2771468, the Technical Board of Appeal...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that cancellation of a patent in an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding is not a taking and does not grant the patentee any compensable claim against the United...more
Data Scape Limited sued Western Digital in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging infringement of four patents that claim methods, systems and apparatuses for transferring music from one...more
On remand from the Federal Circuit, the PTAB ruled that a patentee’s certificate of correction—issued after the Board invalidated the claims in a final written decision—could not be applied retroactively. After the IPR...more
A panel at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) recently held that a certificate of correction fixing an error in a patent’s claim of priority did not apply retroactively in light of an already issued final written...more
Addressing limitations on the role of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit explained that the PTAB erred in rejecting a patent owner’s request to file a request for a...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
On 30 July, the Court of Appeal of The Hague ruled on the formal entitlement to priority following from a US provisional patent application. The attack on priority in this case is part of a recent trend by parties in patent...more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Natural Alternatives International, Inc. v. Iancu, Appeal No. 2017-1962 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 1, 2018) In an appeal from an inter partes reexamination, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Prost, Moore, and Reyna. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board Summary: Removing the priority claim of one application in a chain can affect the ability of pending and...more
Ericsson Inc. v. Intellectual Ventures I LLC (No. 2017-1521, 8/27/18) (Reyna, Taranto, Chen) Reyna, J. - Vacating and remanding the PTAB’s IPR decision because the PTAB erred in not considering portions of the petitioner’s...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
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Reyna, Clevenger, and Wallach. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado - Summary: Even in a simple mechanical case, a narrow disclosure in the...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Dyk, O’Malley, and Wallach. Appeal from the PTAB. Summary: A priority claim must be explicitly stated in the patent and cannot be incorporated by reference from an earlier patent. ...more
For the past few years there has been fear that the law on priority claims in the European Patent Office (EPO) could result in a divisional application becoming prior art against its parent if the divisional application...more
Addressing the doctrine of inherent disclosure, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a protein can satisfy the written description requirement when the priority application discloses only a partial amino...more
On September 20, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion affirming the summary judgement that Abbott’s U.S. Patent No. 5,344,915 (“the ’915 Patent”) was sufficiently supported by the written...more