The Federal Circuit held that a farmer who saved patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds from his harvest and replanted them violated Monsanto’s patent rights, because patent exhaustion does not apply to seeds that were copied rather than purchased from the patentee.
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidation of patents covering methods of preparing cruciferous sprout food products for cancer prevention, holding that the patents were anticipated because the glucosinolate content and Phase 2 enzyme-inducing properties of broccoli sprouts were inherent characterist
The Federal Circuit affirmed infringement of an offshore platform installation patent under the doctrine of equivalents but vacated the damages award, holding that all three damage models presented by the patentee’s expert were legally flawed because they based royalty calculations on the enti
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 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 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