The Federal Circuit held that Myriad Genetics’ patents on isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences — mutations of which indicate elevated breast and ovarian cancer risk — were patent-eligible, while cDNA molecules and method claims for ‘comparing’ or ‘analyzing’ sequence
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc overhauled the doctrine of inequitable conduct, holding that rendering a patent unenforceable requires both but-for materiality (the undisclosed information would have blocked the patent) and specific intent to deceive the USPTO — dramatically narrowing a defense
The Federal Circuit addressed joint infringement in a healthcare IT patent dispute, holding that when patients and healthcare providers together perform steps of a patented method for online patient-provider communications, neither party alone is a direct infringer — applying the direction-or-contro
The Federal Circuit ruled that the widely used ’25 percent rule of thumb’ for calculating starting-point patent royalties is inadmissible as a matter of law, vacating a $388 million damages award against Microsoft and requiring that every patent royalty calculation be tied to the specifi
The Federal Circuit upheld Prometheus’s patents on methods for optimizing thiopurine drug dosing based on metabolite blood levels, holding the claims directed to patent-eligible subject matter because they applied natural correlations through a physical transformation — a ruling the Supreme Co
The Federal Circuit upheld patents on digital image halftoning technology as patent-eligible subject matter, holding that mathematical algorithms applied to specific, practical technological problems are not so abstract as to be excluded from § 101, and cautioning against an overly rigid application
The Federal Circuit reversed a summary judgment of obviousness in a deepwater drilling rig patent dispute, holding that the district court failed to give adequate weight to powerful objective evidence of non-obviousness — including commercial success, long-felt need, and failure of others — and rema
The Federal Circuit applied claim differentiation and rejected a narrowing construction of defibrillator patent claims, holding that independent claims cannot be read to require limitations found only in dependent claims — and affirmed the district court’s infringement finding on the broader i
The Federal Circuit held AstraZeneca’s patents on a once-daily budesonide inhaler formulation (Pulmicort Respules) valid and infringed in a Hatch-Waxman challenge, affirming the district court’s analysis of the complex obviousness record and reinforcing the significance of FDA-required l
The Federal Circuit affirmed an ITC exclusion order barring importation of GPS chip products that infringed Broadcom’s GPS patents, holding that the claimed methods were patent-eligible under the machine-or-transformation test and rejecting a divided-infringement defense based on user interact