Can You Patent Human Genes? ACLU Says No
In a case relating to methods for genotyping a canine breed, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a district court’s judgment as a matter of law that the asserted claims were not subject matter eligible...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 Intl. v. Creative Compounds, LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a decision by a lower court finding claims directed to dietary supplements containing beta-alanine...more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Natural Alternatives Int’l v. Creative Compounds, LLC, Appeal No. 2018-1295 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 15, 2019) In an appeal from a judgment on the pleadings, the Federal Circuit reversed, issuing an...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
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
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
In Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Int’l Ltd, Slip Op. (Nos. 2016-2707, 2016-2708, April 13, 2018) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit provided useful guidance for patentees seeking to...more
In vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is a recent development in reproductive technology, and has been used for creating mouse embryos in vitro. IVG includes obtaining cells from a donor (such as skin cells), and differentiating the...more
In Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Int’l Ltd., a divided panel of the Federal Circuit upheld Vanda’s personalized method of treatment claims relating to its Fanapt® (iloperidone) product against a...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
On December 5, 2016 the USPTO will hold its second Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Roundtable to discuss issues in patent eligibility. The USPTO published a list of eighteen questions in anticipation of the event, dealing...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
Patent Having Claims That Apply Law of Nature Is Patent-Eligible - On June 8, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued an order denying a motion to dismiss, and found that U.S. Patent...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