A divided Federal Circuit panel held that American Axle’s patent on a method for tuning a propshaft to reduce vibration was patent-ineligible as directed to the application of Hooke’s Law — drawing sharp dissents and a petition for rehearing that generated significant debate about the sc
The Federal Circuit reversed a judgment for Biogen and reinstated a jury verdict of invalidity, holding that a recombinant polypeptide cannot be distinguished from its native counterpart for novelty purposes when the molecules are structurally identical — a product-by-process analysis applies even w
The Federal Circuit held that the inter partes review statute does not permit a petitioner to join itself to its own existing IPR proceeding or to add new issues through joinder, closing a widely-used PTAB practice that had allowed parties to work around the one-year filing deadline.
The Federal Circuit vacated a judgment of noninfringement in a dispute over Genentech’s Hemlibra hemophilia drug, holding the district court’s narrow construction of ‘antibody’ was inconsistent with the patent’s written description, which disclosed bispecific, chimeric, and humanized antibodies.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a finding of willful patent infringement and the jury’s $23 million damages award in a droplet microfluidics case, but reversed claim construction on two of three patents and partially vacated the injunction as to product lines where 10X had not yet developed non-infring
The Federal Circuit granted a writ of mandamus directing transfer of a patent case from the Western District of Texas to the Northern District of California — the first such order against Judge Albright’s court — holding that the district court abused its discretion by improperly weighing tran
The Federal Circuit held that a state university’s sovereign immunity barred its involuntary joinder as a co-plaintiff, but permitted an exclusive patent licensee to proceed with infringement litigation without the patent owner, because the licensee had identical interests and no risk of multiple su
The Federal Circuit held that the PTAB may evaluate patent eligibility under § 101 when a patent owner proposes substitute claims during an inter partes review, expanding the PTAB’s authority beyond anticipation and obviousness.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s invalidation of EMC’s data storage system patents on obviousness grounds — holding that the PTAB properly weighed secondary considerations of non-obviousness including commercial success and industry praise, but found them insufficient to overcome
The Federal Circuit upheld the patent eligibility of network traffic monitoring patents under § 101, finding they recite a concrete technical solution to the problem of tracking multi-flow network conversations, but reversed pre-suit damages because the patent owner failed to comply with the patent
The Federal Circuit held that Roche’s patents on etanercept (Enbrel) were not subject to obviousness-type double patenting by Immunex, because Roche’s license to Immunex was not an effective assignment — Roche retained substantial patent rights that prevented common ownership.
The Federal Circuit held that direct competitors have Article III standing to appeal an IPR final written decision even without a specific threat of patent infringement litigation, so long as their commercial activities risk infringement and the patent owner has refused to grant a covenant not to su
The Federal Circuit held that claim preclusion and the Kessler doctrine barred PersonalWeb from re-suing Amazon’s customers for infringement of the same patents, after PersonalWeb had previously settled a lawsuit against Amazon itself without expressly reserving its rights to sue downstream customer
The Federal Circuit addressed whether a standard-essential patent holder’s injunction request against a licensee who rejected a FRAND license offer was properly denied — examining the standards for determining whether a license offer was FRAND-compliant and whether refusal to accept a FRAND of
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal and held that patent claims covering a technique for reducing transmission delays in wireless communication systems were directed to a patent-eligible improvement in computer functionality rather than an abstract idea.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that the USPTO’s subject matter eligibility guidance is not binding on the courts, and that the proper legal standard for patent eligibility remains the Alice/Mayo framework as interpreted by federal court precedent.
The Federal Circuit held that assignor estoppel bars a patent assignor from challenging claim validity in district court, but does not prevent the same assignor from filing inter partes review petitions at the PTAB — a critical distinction with major implications for post-grant strategy.
The Federal Circuit held that a patent term extension under the Hatch-Waxman Act covers only the active ingredient actually approved by the FDA—and its salts and esters—but does not extend to a metabolite of that ingredient, even if the metabolite is what is pharmacologically active in the body.
The Federal Circuit held that color marks on product packaging can be inherently distinctive and thus registrable as trademarks without proof of acquired distinctiveness, clarifying that multicolor product packaging marks are treated differently from product design marks.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court preliminary injunction that barred a patent holder from alleging infringement, holding that a finding of bad faith—including objective baselessness—is a necessary predicate before such an injunction may issue.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court ruling and held that method-of-preparation claims for enriching cell-free fetal DNA from maternal blood were patent eligible under § 101, because the claims went beyond merely observing a natural phenomenon and recited concrete preparation steps.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s exclusion order against Comcast set-top boxes, holding that the ITC’s authority under Section 337 extends to articles that infringe after importation when the importer induces customer infringement domestically.
The Federal Circuit applied the Kessler doctrine — a nineteenth-century rule of preclusion in patent law — to bar PersonalWeb from relitigating patent infringement claims against Amazon Web Services customers after PersonalWeb had previously lost in a suit against Amazon directly, holding that custo
The Federal Circuit granted Google’s writ of mandamus and held that cache servers leased inside third-party ISP facilities do not create a “regular and established place of business” for patent venue purposes unless an employee or agent of the defendant is conducting business there.