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