Federal

The Federal Circuit held that a generic drug company can be liable for inducing infringement of a brand-name patent even when it used a “skinny label” carving out the patented indication, affirming a $235 million jury verdict against Teva.

The Federal Circuit held that a corporate affiliate’s physical stores in a district cannot establish patent venue for related web-only entities that have no employees, offices, or physical presence there.

The Federal Circuit held that a university employment agreement providing that patents “shall be the property” of the university is a statement of future intent, not an automatic present assignment, and therefore did not strip the inventor of standing to sue.

The Federal Circuit vacated PTAB decisions in Qualcomm’s IPR proceedings against Qualcomm patents, holding that the Board’s sua sponte adoption of a new claim construction — without giving the parties an opportunity to address it — violated the Administrative Procedure Act and due process.

The Federal Circuit reversed PTAB obviousness findings, clarifying that prior art references that merely warn of tradeoffs do not categorically teach away from a claimed invention, and that commercial success nexus cannot be assessed element-by-element.

The Federal Circuit granted mandamus and ordered transfer out of the Western District of Texas, holding that courts must disregard a plaintiff’s transparent pre-litigation scheme to manufacture venue by assigning limited patent rights to a newly-formed affiliate days before filing suit.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that an applicant’s clear statements during prosecution disclaiming hierarchical category relationships narrowed the claim scope, and that later prosecution statements could not be used to walk back that unambiguous disavowal.

The Federal Circuit held for the first time that the USPTO can assert prosecution laches as a defense in a § 145 civil action, blocking Gilbert Hyatt’s decades-delayed patent applications from issuing based on his unreasonable and prejudicial delays.

The Federal Circuit reversed a PTAB finding of obviousness, holding that prior art disclosing ambitious performance parameters for a gas turbine engine cannot render claims obvious when the prior art relies on non-existent materials that a skilled artisan could not have made.

The Federal Circuit held that the § 314(d) bar on appealing institution decisions does not extend to post-institution estoppel rulings under § 315(e)(1), giving patent owners a path to challenge PTAB estoppel determinations that arise after an IPR is already underway.

The Federal Circuit reversed summary judgment of noninfringement, reaffirming that apparatus claims must be construed according to what the device physically is rather than how it functions, and remanding genuine disputes about literal infringement and the doctrine of equivalents for jury resolution

The Federal Circuit affirmed a $155 million reasonable royalty award against Baxalta for infringing Bayer’s blood-clotting factor patent but reversed the willfulness finding, holding that mere knowledge of a patent and its infringement is not enough — willfulness requires wanton, malicious, or bad-f

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Amgen’s patents claiming a broad functional genus of anti-PCSK9 antibodies were invalid for lack of enablement, because the specification failed to teach skilled artisans how to make the full range of claimed antibodies without undue experimentation.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Amgen’s antibody patents directed to an entire genus of antibodies binding to a specific PCSK9 epitope lacked adequate enablement — holding that claiming a broad functional genus of antibodies without enabling the full scope of the claim requires undue experim

The Federal Circuit held that technical documents submitted to video coding standards bodies and distributed at widely attended conferences qualify as prior art “printed publications” based on public accessibility, even without formal library indexing.

The Federal Circuit held that a patent owner’s disclaimer of its right to pursue infringement damages in a parallel district court proceeding could moot a challenger’s appeal of an adverse IPR final written decision, giving patent owners a powerful procedural tool.

The Federal Circuit held that Google forfeited its claim construction arguments by failing to raise them before the examiner or the PTAB, clarifying the important procedural distinction between waiver and forfeiture in patent appeals.

The Federal Circuit granted Apple’s mandamus petition, holding that district courts must resolve venue transfer motions before proceeding on the merits, and issued a writ ordering the Western District of Texas to transfer the case to Northern California.

The Federal Circuit held that venue in Hatch-Waxman patent infringement cases is proper only where the defendant’s ANDA submission occurred, not in any district where the generic drug might eventually be sold, resolving a split among district courts.

The Federal Circuit upheld TecSec’s multi-level document security patents as patent eligible under § 101 and reversed the district court’s exclusion of inducement evidence, finding that the claimed data-encryption system represented a specific technical improvement rather than an abstract idea.

The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s invalidity ruling on Immunex’s IL-4 receptor antibody patent, upholding a broad claim construction of ‘human antibodies’ that encompassed humanized antibodies and finding the claims obvious over prior art.