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.

The Federal Circuit held that patent claims covering all methods of achieving a technical result are invalid for insufficient written description when the specification discloses only one specific method, warning inventors that the scope of claims must be commensurate with what was actually disclose

The Federal Circuit affirmed that the term “board” in a decking patent was limited to material made from wood cut from a log, and did not encompass composite decking made from wood fibers and recycled plastic, illustrating the principle that claim terms must be construed in light of the

The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of patent claims covering expressed sequence tags (ESTs) — partial gene sequences — for lack of utility under § 101, holding that ESTs that serve only as research tools without identification of the functions of their corresponding genes do not have the specifi

The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s rejection of chimeric gene patent claims on written description grounds, holding that biotechnology patents need not recite the complete nucleotide sequence of claimed DNA when the sequences are already known in the field.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry system infringed NTP’s wireless email patents, holding that infringement can occur even when some system components are located in Canada, and distinguishing system claims from method claims for extraterritorial purposes.

In a landmark en banc decision, the Federal Circuit confirmed that patent claims must be interpreted in light of the patent’s own specification and prosecution history — not primarily by reference to dictionaries — establishing the modern framework for patent claim construction.