The Federal Circuit held that a patent claiming the priority date of a provisional application is invalid under the on-sale bar if the provisional specification failed to adequately describe the claimed invention, because the patent cannot claim priority it did not earn.
The Federal Circuit held en banc that a patent’s reference to biological material deposited in a public repository satisfies the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112, reversing a panel decision that had threatened biotechnology patents relying on ATCC deposits.
The Federal Circuit held that a government laboratory researcher’s pre-critical-date demonstrations of his internet database system to colleagues without confidentiality restrictions triggered the public use bar, invalidating his patents.
The Federal Circuit affirmed infringement and reversed the district court’s overly narrow claim construction, reaffirming that claim terms carry their ordinary and accustomed meaning unless the patentee clearly redefined the term or disclaimed certain subject matter in the intrinsic record.
The Supreme Court rejected an absolute bar to claiming equivalents after a narrowing claim amendment, instead establishing a flexible presumption that the patentee surrendered equivalents within the amended scope — rebuttable on three specific grounds.
The Federal Circuit affirmed non-infringement in an e-commerce coupon patent case, holding that preamble language in a method claim does not limit the claim’s scope when the claim body describes a structurally complete invention and the patentee did not rely on the preamble to distinguish prio
The Supreme Court held that the Federal Circuit lacks appellate jurisdiction over a case when patent law appears only in the defendant’s compulsory counterclaim and is absent from the plaintiff’s well-pleaded complaint.
The Federal Circuit reversed a narrow claim construction, holding that the claim term “reciprocating member” in an exercise equipment patent should be given its ordinary meaning encompassing multi-component and curved structures, not limited to the single straight bar depicted in the spe
In an en banc decision, the Federal Circuit held that subject matter disclosed in a patent specification but not claimed is dedicated to the public and cannot be recaptured through the doctrine of equivalents — patentees who fail to claim a disclosed alternative cannot later assert it as equivalent
The Federal Circuit held that the equitable doctrine of prosecution laches can bar enforcement of patent claims that issued after an unreasonable and unexplained multi-decade delay in patent prosecution — a landmark ruling against Jerome Lemelson’s famous ‘submarine patent’ strateg