The Federal Circuit held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board may adopt claim constructions that differ from those entered by a district court in concurrent litigation, as the two proceedings are legally independent.
The Federal Circuit held that patent owners may amend claims during inter partes review to address issues beyond the specific grounds raised in the petition, provided the amendments do not enlarge claim scope or add new matter.
The Federal Circuit held that although an irrevocable patent license cannot be unilaterally revoked by the grantor, both parties may mutually agree to terminate it, and doing so restores the licensor’s standing to bring patent infringement suits against the former licensee.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s ruling that the claim term “Downloadable” was indefinite in Finjan’s computer virus detection patents, holding that the term’s plain meaning — an executable or interpretable application program — was sufficiently definite.
The Federal Circuit issued two precedential opinions vacating preliminary injunctions in hoverboard design patent cases, holding that courts must conduct product-by-product infringement analysis under the ordinary observer test and properly account for prior art when evaluating likelihood of success
The Federal Circuit affirmed that IBM’s patents covering coordinated map-based and list-based selection of geographic data were directed to the abstract idea of organizing and displaying visual information, lacking an inventive concept sufficient for patent eligibility.
The Federal Circuit reversed an indefiniteness ruling against patents covering geometric meshing methods used in computer-aided design, holding that the district court applied an incorrect ‘unanswered questions’ test rather than the proper ‘reasonable certainty’ standard from
The Federal Circuit addressed trade secret and copyright claims arising from TA Instruments’ alleged misappropriation of Malvern Panalytical’s confidential algorithms and software for rheology instruments — affirming the district court’s rulings on preemption of state trade secret
The Federal Circuit reversed dismissal of a peer-to-peer video delivery network patent under § 101, holding that the complaint plausibly alleged the claims represented a specific technical improvement over prior content distribution networks.
The Federal Circuit affirmed infringement of Corcept Therapeutics’ method-of-treatment patents covering combination therapy using mifepristone with a strong CYP3A inhibitor — finding that Teva’s ANDA label induced infringement and rejecting Teva’s challenge to the skinny label carv
The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of claims covering a computer-implemented system for identifying Social Security Disability Insurance eligibility, holding the claims were directed to an abstract mental process that humans perform through observation and evaluation.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that product-by-process claim language — which defines a product in terms of the process used to make it — does not impart patentable weight unless the claimed process produces a product that is structurally and functionally different from the prior art.
The Federal Circuit held that the reissue recapture doctrine bars an applicant from using a reissue application to reclaim claim scope that was deliberately surrendered during original prosecution to overcome a patent eligibility rejection under § 101.
The Federal Circuit held that the Patent Act requires inventors to be human beings, affirming the USPTO’s rejection of applications that named an artificial intelligence system called DABUS as the sole inventor.
The Federal Circuit affirmed an award of attorneys’ fees under the court’s inherent equitable powers, holding that a patent owner’s voluntary dismissal from one district followed immediately by refiling the same case in a different district constituted bad-faith forum shopping that warranted sanctio
The Federal Circuit held that Stanford University’s patents on detecting organ transplant rejection via donor cell-free DNA are ineligible under § 101, finding the claims directed to a natural phenomenon measured by conventional techniques.
The Federal Circuit affirmed denial of a preliminary injunction, holding that speculative harms and generalized customer concerns about potential future harm do not constitute the concrete evidence of irreparable injury required to support preliminary patent injunctive relief.
The Federal Circuit held that prior art references containing obvious transcription errors — mistakes that a skilled artisan would immediately recognize as misstatements — cannot be used to establish unpatentability, because the erroneous content does not accurately disclose the state of the art.
The Federal Circuit reversed the TTAB’s cancellation of Coca-Cola’s U.S. registrations for THUMS UP and LIMCA, holding that a petitioner seeking cancellation under Lanham Act § 14(3) must show actual consumer confusion or misrepresentation affecting the U.S. market — competitive injury a
The Federal Circuit vacated a $2.75 billion patent infringement judgment against Cisco, holding that the trial judge was disqualified from hearing the case after discovering his wife owned Cisco stock — placing the stock into a blind trust did not satisfy the federal recusal statute’s divestiture re
The Federal Circuit held that a patent specification adequately supported a negative claim limitation — “absent an immediately preceding loading dose” — through clinical trial data showing efficacy without a loading dose, sustaining Novartis’s fingolimod patent.
The Federal Circuit addressed trade secret misappropriation claims between competing food processing equipment manufacturers — affirming the district court’s finding that Weber had misappropriated Provisur’s trade secrets through improper acquisition and use of confidential technical inf
The Federal Circuit addressed Teradata’s patent infringement claims against SAP in the context of the broader antitrust and interoperability dispute over enterprise database software, affirming the district court’s rulings on claim construction and damages methodology while the parallel
The Federal Circuit held that the USPTO Commissioner for Patents could constitutionally exercise the Director’s review authority over PTAB decisions during a vacancy, rejecting Arthrex’s Appointments Clause and Federal Vacancies Reform Act challenges.