In a precedent-setting design patent case, the Federal Circuit held that comparison prior art used to defend against infringement must be drawn from the same article of manufacture claimed in the design patent — prior art from a different type of product cannot be used to confuse the ordinary observ
The Federal Circuit reversed a summary judgment of patent invalidity for anticipation, finding genuine disputes about whether the alleged prior art product predated the patent’s critical date, and separately affirmed that Mosaic’s claimed trade dress was invalid as functional.
The Federal Circuit issued two precedential opinions vacating preliminary injunctions in hoverboard design patent cases, holding that courts must conduct product-by-product infringement analysis under the ordinary observer test and properly account for prior art when evaluating likelihood of success
The Federal Circuit held that a detailed price quotation letter sent before the patent critical date constituted a commercial offer for sale that triggered the on-sale bar, invalidating a design patent for a medical device handle.
The Federal Circuit reversed a design patent rejection, holding that prior art can only anticipate a design patent claim if the prior art reference discloses a design applied to the same article of manufacture identified in the claim — a design for an art tool cannot anticipate a design for a lip im
The Federal Circuit reversed a PTAB finding that two Gamon Plus gravity-feed dispenser design patents were not obvious, holding that secondary considerations lacked nexus to the claimed design and could not overcome the strong prima facie case of obviousness.
On remand from the Supreme Court’s Samsung v. Apple decision, the Federal Circuit declined to define the legal test for identifying the ‘article of manufacture’ in design patent damages and instead sent the case back to the district court to resolve the issue in the first instance
The Federal Circuit affirmed the bulk of Apple’s massive patent verdict against Samsung — including design patent damages calculated on Samsung’s entire smartphone profits rather than just infringing components — a ruling later reversed by the Supreme Court in a landmark decision on what
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc eliminated the two-part ‘point of novelty’ test for design patent infringement and replaced it with a unified ordinary observer test — holding that design patent infringement is determined by whether an ordinary observer, familiar with the prior art, w