5 Key Takeaways | Rolling with the Legal Punches: Resetting Patent Strategy to Address Changes in the Law
Verdict in T-Cell Immunotherapy IP Case Tests 'Reasonable Royalty' Concept for Large Damage Awards
Current written description jurisprudence can make it difficult to obtain broad antibody patents, leading practitioners to explore alternative claiming strategies in an effort to bypass the limited scope afforded under the...more
On March 24, 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) issued a decision titled In Re: Riggs (the Riggs decision) that vacated a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the US...more
In In re: Xencor, Inc., the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirmed that the limiting preamble of a Jepson claim must be supported by the specification with “sufficient written description.” In its decision, the...more
Last week a remarkably interesting Federal Circuit case was decided concerning whether an asserted reference was properly shown to qualify as prior art in the rejection of a pending patent application. The pending application...more
On March 24, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) issued an opinion vacating and remanding a decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) that a published patent application...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found a Jepson claim unpatentable where the specification did not provide adequate written description for the portion of the claim purporting to recite what was already well...more
On September 21, 2023, the PTAB denied United Services Automobile Association’s petition to institute inter partes review of Auto Telematics’s U.S. Patent No. 9,633,487. IPR2023-00519, Paper 10....more
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has affirmed the lower court’s ruling that Amgen’s broad genus claims to cholesterol-lowering antibodies are invalid for lack of enablement....more
Last month the Federal Circuit affirmed a PTAB inter partes review (IPR) decision finding that the University of Minnesota’s patent claim directed to the anti-cancer drug sofosbuvir was not adequately supported by the written...more
Hosted by C5, the 16th Annual Forum on Pharma & Biotech Patent Litigation in Europe returns 23-24 May, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam Central Station, Amsterdam with curated programing for you to gain the knowledge and...more
Regents of the University of Minnesota v. Gilead Sciences, Inc., Appeal No. 21-2168 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 6, 2023) The Federal Circuit’s only precedential patent opinion this week focuses on the written description requirement...more
Smith & Nephew petitioned for IPR of Arthrex’s ’907 patent, which claims a surgical device with an “eyelet” through which a suture is threaded. Smith & Nephew argued in relevant part that certain claims were anticipated by a...more
As part of the recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took steps to return to normal operations. It began requiring live oral arguments in August 2022 and, by November,...more
On December 3rd, Junior Party the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, Broad) filed its Contingent Preliminary Motion No. 2 in Interference No. 106,133 (which names Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party),...more
ACI’s Advanced Summit on Life Sciences Patents is back in person on June 2–3 in New York City. Our reimagined 2022 conference will provide practical insights on how to implement bullet-proof patent prosecution tactics,...more
Over the last 20-plus years, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit cases concerning written description and enablement have become a hot-button issue in the chemical and life sciences practices. The year 2021 was no...more
[co-author: Jamie Dohopolski] Love it or hate it, ignore the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at your peril. The introduction of the PTAB as part of the America Invents Act over ten years ago has forever changed...more
NOVARTIS PHARMACEUTICALS v. ACCORD HEALTHCARE INC. Before Moore, Linn, and O’Malley. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: A patent application that was silent about a...more
In a recent decision issued in Indivior UK Limited v. Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision from the PTAB that a limitation to range of polymer weight percentages lacked written description support...more
The week of Thanksgiving was a slower one for the Federal Circuit. But we still got an interesting written description decision with a divided panel. Below we provide our usual weekly statistics and our case of the week—our...more
Indivior UK Ltd. v. Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories S.A., Appeal Nos. 2020-2073, -2142 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 24, 2021) - Our Case of the Week this week focuses on the written description requirement when the patent claims a range. The...more
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act prescribed two very different post-grant review proceedings in U.S. patent law. The first, post-grant review (PGR), had some analogies with European opposition practice, in that petitions...more
The recently reversed jury verdict and billion-dollar judgment in favor of Juno Therapeutics on the grounds that the asserted claims did not satisfy the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112. See Juno...more
Join the conference that the “who’s who” of Hatch-Waxman litigators have designated as the forum which sets the standards for Paragraph IV practice. ACI’s Paragraph IV Litigation Conference is returning LIVE & IN-PERSON to...more
In the recent case of Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s invalidation of certain of Amgen’s antibody patent claims, concluding that the claims were not “enable[d]” under 35...more