The Federal Circuit held in a poxvirus vaccine interference that there is no per se rule requiring a patent applicant to recite known structural information in the written description — an applicant may rely on publicly available scientific literature for what is well-known in the field.
The Supreme Court unanimously held that courts must apply the traditional four-factor equitable test when deciding whether to grant a permanent injunction in a patent case, rejecting both a categorical rule granting injunctions to prevailing patentees and a categorical rule against injunctions for n
The Federal Circuit held that when a patent defendant asserts an advice-of-counsel defense to willful infringement, it waives attorney-client privilege for all communications about the patent’s validity, enforceability, and infringement — but the waiver does not automatically extend to all att
The Federal Circuit reversed a finding of anticipation, holding that a prior art reference disclosing a broad temperature range of 100–500°C did not anticipate a claimed narrower range of 330–450°C — a genus does not anticipate every species, and a broader prior art range anticipates a narrower clai
The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement, holding that a patent’s claim preamble is limiting when it recites essential structural elements of the claimed invention, and construed the asserted dental implant patent claims to require a complete emergence cuff and abutmen
The Supreme Court unanimously held that a patent does not by itself establish market power for antitrust tying purposes; plaintiffs must prove market power directly through evidence of the relevant market.
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidity of SmithKline’s Paxil patent, holding that product-by-process claims are anticipated by prior art that discloses the same product, even when the prior art used a different process to make it — because patents protect products, not processes, under such c
The Federal Circuit affirmed patent unenforceability for inequitable conduct, holding that pharmaceutical patent applicants who submitted declarations from scientists with undisclosed financial ties to the patent owner engaged in deceptive conduct that was material because the patent examiner had sp
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded in a horizontal directional drilling patent case, holding that the 1992 PTO Rule 56 materiality standard supplements rather than replaces the earlier ‘reasonable examiner’ standard, that false statements in a Rule 131 declaration are inherently ma
The Federal Circuit held that a licensee currently in good standing under a patent license lacks standing to bring a declaratory judgment action challenging the patent’s validity — a ruling the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in 2007.