The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed invalidity of Alice’s financial settlement software patent claims — but produced seven separate opinions with no majority rationale, reflecting deep disagreement on how to apply § 101 to software and setting the stage for the Supreme Court’s
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $391 million patent infringement judgment against SAP — then the largest software patent damages award ever affirmed on appeal — for infringement of Versata’s product pricing patents, while vacating an overbroad injunction.
The Federal Circuit held that the term ‘spaced relationship’ in a heart rate monitor patent was not indefinite because it was ‘amenable to construction’ and not ‘insolubly ambiguous’ — applying its then-prevailing indefiniteness test that the Supreme Court unanimo
The Supreme Court held 6-3 that the copyright first sale doctrine applies to copies manufactured abroad and first sold outside the United States — allowing parallel importation of foreign-made goods bearing copyrighted content without the copyright holder’s permission, and overruling the Ninth
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the Cybor de novo standard of review for claim construction — declining to overturn its 1998 precedent requiring appellate courts to review district court claim construction rulings without deference, in a decision that set the stage for the Supreme Cou
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a patent holder whose domestic industry consists solely of licensing activities — with no domestic manufacturing — can satisfy Section 337’s domestic industry requirement at the ITC, opening the door wider for non-practicing entities to use exclusion orders as
The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s post-trial entry of judgment as a matter of law for Apple, overturning a $208 million jury verdict and holding that Apple’s Spotlight, Cover Flow, and Time Machine features did not infringe patents covering chronologically organized data st
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc held that a party who induces multiple actors to collectively perform all steps of a method patent claim can be liable for induced infringement even if no single party directly infringes all steps — significantly expanding liability for divided infringement of int
The Federal Circuit held that Voter Verified’s copyright claim against Premier Election Solutions for voter verification software failed under the merger doctrine — finding that the specific expression in the claimed software code was inseparable from the underlying idea of a voter-verified pa
The Federal Circuit held that patents on computer-implemented methods for managing stable-value life insurance policies are directed to an abstract idea and therefore invalid under § 101, ruling that adding generic computer implementation to an abstract mathematical algorithm does not create patent-
The Federal Circuit reversed an obviousness finding in a Hatch-Waxman dispute over method-of-treatment patents covering naproxen-esomeprazole combination therapy for treating pain while reducing gastrointestinal damage — holding that the district court failed to properly analyze the motivation to co
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $371 million enhanced damages award against W.L. Gore for willful infringement of Bard’s vascular graft patent — one of the largest patent verdicts in history — holding that Gore’s employee did not qualify as a joint inventor and that the pioneering PTFE gr
The Sixth Circuit held that Static Control Components had standing to sue Lexmark under the Lanham Act for false advertising in the toner cartridge market — a ruling affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2014 under a new zone-of-interests and proximate cause standing framework that displaced the split am
The Supreme Court held that the Hatch-Waxman Act permits generic drug manufacturers to bring counterclaims to correct overbroad Orange Book use codes that improperly block FDA approval for non-patented uses of a drug.
The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to YouTube, holding that the DMCA § 512(c) safe harbor does not protect a service provider that had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing material — and that willful blindness to pervasive infringement ca
The Supreme Court held unanimously that patent claims directed to natural correlations between drug metabolite levels and therapeutic efficacy are patent-ineligible laws of nature, even when combined with conventional application steps, and established the foundational two-step Mayo framework.
The Federal Circuit affirmed an exceptional case fee award against Allcare Health Management for maintaining objectively baseless patent infringement claims, applying the then-prevailing two-part test for § 285 fee awards and addressing the standard of review for exceptional case determinations — a
The Federal Circuit held that MySpace’s social networking website did not infringe Graphon’s patents on searchable online databases, finding the asserted claims invalid as obvious combinations of well-known internet database and search technologies — an important post-KSR ruling on obvio
The Federal Circuit held that Dealertrack’s claims covering a computer-aided system for routing automobile dealer credit applications to lenders were directed to the unpatentable abstract idea of processing credit applications — striking down the patents under § 101 because adding ‘apply
The Supreme Court held 6–2 that Congress acted within its Copyright Clause power when it restored copyright protection to millions of foreign works that had fallen into the public domain in the United States, and that doing so did not violate the First Amendment.
The Federal Circuit reversed a finding of indefiniteness in a touchscreen patent dispute, holding that a claim term need not be expressed in traditional means-plus-function form to invoke § 112(f) — and clarified when functional claim language triggers the algorithm-disclosure requirement, with sign
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court dismissal and held that Ultramercial’s patent on distributing copyrighted content free-to-consumers in exchange for viewing advertisements was patent-eligible subject matter under § 101 — finding the multi-step process involved meaningful, non-abst
The Federal Circuit held that Classen Immunotherapies’ method claims for identifying optimal vaccination schedules to reduce chronic immune-mediated disorders were patent-eligible under § 101 in part — distinguishing between claims that merely require correlating a natural relationship and cla
The Federal Circuit held that CyberSource’s patent on a method of detecting credit card fraud by tracking internet addresses was directed to an unpatentable mental process — a gathering and comparing of information that a human could perform in their mind — and that reciting a Beauregard compu