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 Supreme Court held that the Bayh-Dole Act does not automatically transfer title to federally funded inventions to universities; a researcher’s prior contractual assignment to a private company defeated Stanford’s patent claim.
The Supreme Court held that induced patent infringement requires knowledge of the patent, and that the willful blindness doctrine — deliberately avoiding confirmation of a high-probability fact — satisfies that knowledge requirement.
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 Supreme Court held that the machine-or-transformation test is a useful but not exclusive test for patent eligibility under §101, and affirmed rejection of Bilski’s risk-hedging claims as unpatentable abstract ideas.
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
The Second Circuit held that eBay was not liable for contributory trademark infringement arising from third-party sellers listing counterfeit Tiffany jewelry, because eBay’s general knowledge that counterfeit goods were present on its platform — without specific knowledge of particular infring
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc held that 35 U.S.C. § 112 contains a written description requirement that is distinct from the enablement requirement, and invalidated a broad genus patent covering all substances that inhibit NF-κB activity because the patent described the goal but not the means.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $200 million jury verdict and permanent injunction against Microsoft for infringing i4i’s patent on a method for editing custom XML in word processing documents, rejecting Microsoft’s invalidity defense premised on a prior-sold product and upholding the cle
The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Copyright Act’s registration requirement is a claim-processing rule, not a jurisdictional prerequisite — meaning courts can hear copyright cases even when registration has not occurred, if neither party objects.
The Federal Circuit vacated a patent damages award and held that a reasonable royalty calculation must rely on licenses that are technologically and economically comparable to the patent at issue — rejecting a royalty rate derived from re-bundling agreements that had no connection to the claimed inv
The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of invalidity of a patent on a method for bulk email delivery, holding the claims obvious under post-KSR standards where the claimed process involved only routine, predictable steps well within the common sense of a person with ordinary skill in email ma
The Federal Circuit upheld Prometheus Laboratories’ patents on methods of optimizing thiopurine drug dosage by measuring metabolite levels in patients, finding the diagnostic methods patent-eligible under § 101 because the claimed steps transformed an article — a patient’s blood — by det
The Federal Circuit largely affirmed that Roche’s pegylated erythropoietin product Mircera infringed four of Amgen’s EPO patents, but vacated the district court’s double-patenting rulings and remanded for additional analysis — a significant ruling in the long-running battle over th
The Federal Circuit vacated a $1.5 billion patent damages award against Microsoft, holding that the jury’s royalty base improperly relied on the entire market value of Microsoft’s products — including features unrelated to the patented invention — without proof that the patented feature
The Federal Circuit en banc held that the traditional four-factor preliminary injunction test applies in Hatch-Waxman patent cases — eliminating the prior practice under which a showing of validity and infringement created a presumption of irreparable harm — and remanded the preliminary injunction a
The Federal Circuit addressed the joint infringement problem in method patent claims — holding that when multiple parties each perform different steps of a claimed method, infringement requires that one party direct or control the actions of the other parties performing the remaining steps, setting