The Supreme Court unanimously held that Grokster could be liable for copyright infringement by inducing its users to infringe — adopting an inducement theory of secondary copyright liability and holding that a distributor who promotes infringing use through affirmative acts of encouragement can be h
The Supreme Court held that 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1)’s safe harbor exempts from patent infringement all uses of patented compounds that are reasonably related to generating information for an FDA submission, including preclinical studies that do not themselves produce data submitted to the FDA.
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
The Ninth Circuit held that negligence, medical malpractice, or disagreement over treatment does not establish an Eighth Amendment violation without proof that a prison official actually knew of and consciously disregarded a serious risk.
The Supreme Court held that a defendant asserting classic fair use in a trademark case bears no burden to negate likelihood of confusion, and some degree of consumer confusion may coexist with a lawful fair use.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that farmers who saved and replanted seeds from Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready soybeans infringed Monsanto’s plant patents — holding that patent exhaustion did not apply to second-generation seeds and that Monsanto’s technology use agreements validly
In an en banc decision, the Federal Circuit eliminated the rule that a patent infringer who invokes attorney-client privilege faces an adverse inference of willful infringement, substantially reshaping the willfulness landscape.
The Federal Circuit held that the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision does not create a new property right and requires proof that access was unauthorized; because Chamberlain implicitly authorized customers to use third-party transmitters, Skylink’s universal garage door opener did not
The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of a patent application for lack of novelty, holding that a slide presentation displayed for several days at professional conferences constitutes a ‘printed publication’ under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) based on public accessibility — even without distribut
The Federal Circuit vacated summary judgment of non-infringement, holding that the claim term ‘operatively connected’ means components must be connected in a way that permits them to perform their designated function — not that they must be physically attached in a unitary structure.
The Federal Circuit established that a generic drug company’s filing of an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) with a Paragraph IV certification cannot, by itself, constitute willful patent infringement or justify enhanced damages and attorney fees.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a jury verdict that LabCorp indirectly infringed Metabolite’s patent on a method of detecting vitamin B12 and folate deficiency by measuring and correlating homocysteine levels, a case that later reached the Supreme Court and raised fundamental questions about pate
The Federal Circuit held that a patent applicant’s cancellation of an independent claim and rewriting of a dependent claim as a new independent claim during prosecution triggers prosecution history estoppel, creating a presumptive bar to capturing the surrendered subject matter through the doc
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidity of Chiron’s HER2 antibody patent, holding that claims broadly encompassing chimeric and humanized antibodies were not enabled by a specification that only disclosed murine antibodies, even though the claims were filed years before Herceptin was developed
The Federal Circuit held that a Hatch-Waxman patent term extension covers all salt forms of an active pharmaceutical ingredient, not just the specific salt approved by the FDA.
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidation of the University of Rochester’s COX-2 inhibitor method patent, holding that a patent claiming a method of using a compound fails the written description requirement when the specification does not disclose the actual compounds needed to perform the me
The Federal Circuit reversed summary judgment of non-infringement, reaffirming that courts may not import limitations from the specification into patent claims and that a single described embodiment does not limit the scope of broader claim language.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $521 million judgment against Microsoft for infringing Eolas Technologies’ patent on interactive embedded objects in web browsers — holding that Internet Explorer’s implementation of interactive plug-ins and applets infringed the Eolas patent covering metho
The Federal Circuit vacated a summary judgment of non-infringement, holding that the claim term ‘a substantial helical flow path’ is a meaningful approximation — not an absolute requirement for a geometrically perfect helix — and that the district court erred by construing the term to re
The Federal Circuit held that method-of-use claims on a pharmaceutical compound are not patentably distinct from an earlier patent claiming the same compound when the earlier patent’s specification already disclosed that use, affirming invalidity for nonstatutory obviousness-type double patent