The Federal Circuit held that claims directed to a specific improvement in database technology — a self-referential logical table that allows all types of data to be stored in a single table structure — were directed to a concrete software improvement rather than an abstract idea, surviving Alice st
The Federal Circuit denied mandamus to TC Heartland, a company challenging patent venue in the District of Delaware, deferring to its own longstanding rule that domestic corporations can be sued for patent infringement wherever they are subject to personal jurisdiction — a position the Supreme Court
An en banc Federal Circuit held that a patent owner’s restricted domestic sales don’t exhaust patent rights when clearly communicated restrictions are violated, and that foreign sales never exhaust U.S. patent rights — both holdings later reversed by the Supreme Court in a landmark 2017
The Federal Circuit affirmed a jury verdict of non-infringement for Apple in a wireless patent case, holding that even mathematically equivalent signal-processing operations implemented through structurally different hardware pipelines are not equivalent under the doctrine of equivalents — the diffe
An en banc Federal Circuit held that Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, which bars registration of ‘disparaging’ trademarks, violates the First Amendment — a landmark ruling that the Supreme Court affirmed in Matal v. Tam (2017), eliminating one of trademark law’s longest-standing res
The Federal Circuit held that there is no universal rule requiring patent damages models to begin with the smallest saleable patent-practicing unit — but remanded CSIRO’s Wi-Fi patent damages award because the district court failed to account for the patent’s standard-essential status wh
The Federal Circuit unanimously rejected a patent holder’s constitutional challenge to inter partes review, holding that IPR proceedings do not violate Article III or the Seventh Amendment because patents are public rights that may be adjudicated by an administrative agency without access to a
The Federal Circuit held that the ITC’s Section 337 jurisdiction covers only physical ‘articles’ and does not extend to electronic transmissions of digital data — blocking the ITC from issuing exclusion orders against competitors that infringe by transmitting digital files over the
In a 6-5 en banc decision, the Federal Circuit held that laches remains a valid defense that can bar recovery of pre-suit patent damages — splitting from the Supreme Court’s copyright ruling in Petrella v. MGM and ruling that Congress had separately codified laches as a patent defense in 35 U.
On remand from the Supreme Court, an en banc Federal Circuit expanded direct infringement liability beyond the single-actor rule, holding that an entity can be liable for another’s performance of method steps when it conditions participation or a benefit on that performance and establishes the
An en banc Federal Circuit held 6-4 that the ITC has jurisdiction to issue exclusion orders for imported products that become ‘articles that infringe’ through induced infringement completed after importation — resolving a key question about the ITC’s reach over method patent claims
The Federal Circuit affirmed the first covered business method patent review final written decision under the AIA, holding that the PTAB correctly invalidated Versata’s pricing patent under Section 101 and that CBM eligibility determinations are reviewable on appeal — establishing the Federal
An en banc Federal Circuit overruled its prior ‘strong presumption’ that claim terms without the word ‘means’ are not means-plus-function limitations, holding that terms like ‘module’ that claim a function without reciting sufficient structure are subject to Secti
The Federal Circuit held that Sequenom’s patent on detecting paternally inherited cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in maternal blood for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis was patent-ineligible under § 101 — finding the claims directed to a natural phenomenon (cffDNA’s presence in maternal bloo
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 affirmed infringement findings in a spinal implant patent case but remanded on damages, holding that lost profits are limited to products the patentee itself sells and that convoyed sales damages require a functional relationship between the patented and unpatented products — sig
In the first Federal Circuit decision reviewing an inter partes review (IPR) final written decision, the court affirmed the PTAB’s use of the ‘broadest reasonable interpretation’ claim construction standard in IPR proceedings — a ruling that set the rules for thousands of subsequen
The Federal Circuit affirmed that document-scanning and data-recognition patents are invalid under Section 101 as directed to long-practiced abstract ideas — and notably held that Section 101 invalidity can be decided at the motion to dismiss stage, before claim construction, establishing an early-e
The Federal Circuit held that Myriad’s claims to methods of comparing or analyzing BRCA gene sequences were patent-ineligible under § 101 as directed to abstract mental processes — applying the Supreme Court’s Mayo framework to diagnostic comparison claims on remand from AMP v. Myriad, w
The Federal Circuit held that exporting a single ‘main’ or ‘essential’ component of a patented multi-component product from the U.S. can constitute infringement under Section 271(f)(1) — a ruling the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in 2017, holding that a single component
The Federal Circuit held that DDR Holdings’ patent on a method for retaining website visitors by displaying third-party products within the host website’s visual framework — rather than redirecting visitors to the third-party’s site — was patent-eligible under Alice because the cla
The Federal Circuit provided the most comprehensive guidance yet on how to calculate reasonable royalties for standard-essential patents (SEPs) subject to FRAND commitments, holding that damages must reflect incremental value of the invention rather than value derived from standardization, and that
On its third visit to the Federal Circuit, Ultramercial’s patent on ad-supported online media distribution was finally struck down as an abstract idea — completing a legal journey that spanned four years, two Federal Circuit opinions, and two Supreme Court remands, all bookended by the Alice d
The Federal Circuit affirmed its two-part Seagate test for enhanced patent damages, refusing to award treble damages even where a jury found willful infringement — a holding the Supreme Court would reverse in 2016 by eliminating the objective recklessness requirement and restoring broader district c