The Federal Circuit held that the USPTO Director’s authority to review PTAB decisions under the Arthrex remedy is not constrained by the IPR statutory deadlines, and that the Appointments Clause does not guarantee patent owners a right to timely Director rehearing.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Personalized Media Communications’ patent covering digital rights management technology is unenforceable for prosecution laches, voiding a $308 million jury verdict against Apple, after finding PMC engaged in unreasonable and unexplained delays in prosecuting
The Federal Circuit vacated a district court’s indefiniteness finding for a viscometer patent, holding that the intrinsic record — not dictionary definitions — governs claim construction, and that terms of degree are not indefinite when the specification provides adequate context for a skilled
The Federal Circuit granted mandamus, holding that a foreign defendant cannot defeat Rule 4(k)(2) personal jurisdiction in the plaintiff’s chosen forum by unilaterally consenting to jurisdiction in a different district after the lawsuit is filed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Sandoz’s generic pirfenidone label would not induce infringement of Genentech’s method-of-treatment patents, and also upheld invalidity of the liver function test patents as obvious, clarifying the inducement standard for drug labels in Hatch-Waxman litigation.
The Federal Circuit held that genuine disputes of material fact precluded summary judgment of patent invalidity for failure to name a co-inventor, reversing the district court’s ruling that the patents were invalid for nonjoinder.
The Federal Circuit held that collateral estoppel from a prior IPR proceeding can invalidate claims in a later IPR even when the claims use different language, as long as the differences do not materially alter the question of patentability.
The Federal Circuit upheld the exclusion of a patent owner’s expert witness whose infringement opinion rested on a claim construction that materially differed from the district court’s adopted construction, resulting in summary judgment of noninfringement.
The Federal Circuit held that a patent owner’s disclaimer made for the first time during an IPR proceeding does not bind the PTAB in that same proceeding, preventing patentees from narrowing claim scope through argument alone to avoid invalidity.
The Federal Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court’s holding that five patent claims covering ibrutinib (Imbruvica) — a breakthrough cancer drug — were not invalid for obviousness, lack of written description, or lack of enablement, underscoring appellate deference to trial court fact