The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of patent claims covering expressed sequence tags (ESTs) — partial gene sequences — for lack of utility under § 101, holding that ESTs that serve only as research tools without identification of the functions of their corresponding genes do not have the specifi
The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s rejection of chimeric gene patent claims on written description grounds, holding that biotechnology patents need not recite the complete nucleotide sequence of claimed DNA when the sequences are already known in the field.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry system infringed NTP’s wireless email patents, holding that infringement can occur even when some system components are located in Canada, and distinguishing system claims from method claims for extraterritorial purposes.
In a landmark en banc decision, the Federal Circuit confirmed that patent claims must be interpreted in light of the patent’s own specification and prosecution history — not primarily by reference to dictionaries — establishing the modern framework for patent claim construction.
The Federal Circuit reversed an infringement judgment in a video-on-demand patent case, holding that the applicant’s prosecution argument distinguishing the prior art based on ‘point-to-point’ network interconnections created a prosecution disclaimer that limited all claims grouped
The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s denial of a permanent injunction to MercExchange after eBay’s online auction system was found to infringe its patents, applying the court’s general rule that permanent injunctions issue in patent cases absent exceptional circumstanc
The Federal Circuit reversed a grant of summary judgment of non-infringement, holding that the term “substantially flattened surfaces” in a tampon applicator patent means surfaces materially flatter than the cylindrical barrel — not surfaces that are flat within a manufacturing tolerance
The Federal Circuit affirmed the TTAB’s refusal to register VEUVE ROYALE for sparkling wine, holding that it was likely to cause confusion with the famous VEUVE CLICQUOT mark under the DuPont factors analysis.
The Federal Circuit reversed the district court and invalidated Merck’s Fosamax once-weekly dosing patent as obvious, holding that prior art newsletter articles clearly disclosed once-weekly alendronate dosing, that the claim term ‘about’ retains its ordinary meaning of ‘appr
The Federal Circuit held that a patentee’s listing of a patent in the FDA Orange Book does not, by itself, create the reasonable apprehension of suit necessary for a generic drug maker to maintain a Hatch-Waxman declaratory judgment action challenging the patent’s validity or non-infring