Posts in Courts

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday rejected Boeing’s bid to revisit its August 2025 ruling in favor of electric-aircraft startup Zunum Aero, holding that Boeing’s patent-inventorship counterclaims did not strip the Ninth Circuit of jurisdiction over the trade secret dispute. The Ninth Circuit panel denied Boeing’s petition for panel rehearing after concluding that its patent counterclaims were “permissive” rather than “compulsory”, and therefore not subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In 2025, a patent dispute between Chinese companies in the camera-module space drew close attention across the industry — SUNNY v. AAC [Patent Reexamination and Invalidation Department Decision No. 566288, et al.]. The case ended with 11 patents invalidated, four of them in their entirety. There was a single reason: the claims were not supported by the specification.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Zilkr Cloud Technologies, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc., vacating in part and affirming in part a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision. The PTAB had held claims 1, 2, 6 through 8, and 12 through 14 of a patent owned by Zilkr Cloud Technologies, LLC unpatentable as obvious, and the CAFC remanded for further proceedings. The opinion was authored by Chief Judge Moore.

Yesterday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that the agency had designated as informative a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision in an ex parte appeal reversing an examiner’s rejection of patent claims directed to the isolation and detection of microRNA (miRNA) to determine a patient’s risk of radiation exposure for improper Markush groupings. Drawing primarily upon case law from the predecessor to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Federal Circuit, the informative designation is notable for its alignment with recent Federal Circuit case law encouraging flexibility in Markush grouping analyses.

On August 21, wikiHow, Inc. filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against OpenAI, Inc. and eight affiliated entities, alleging violations of the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The lawsuit centers on claims that OpenAI copied wikiHow’s how-to articles without authorization to train ChatGPT and to ground its outputs, then used that copied content to generate substitutes for wikiHow’s website.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling answering multiple questions of first impression regarding copyright claims involving building plans, including the scope of protection under the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (AWCPA) for constructed buildings and floorplan renderings. Vacating the Western District of Texas’ dismissal of Kipp Flores Architects’ (KFA) copyright infringement claims, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of KFA’s claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) over alleged failures to include copyright management information (CMI) on new floorplans developed from KFA’s technical drawings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday issued a precedential decision denying a number of inventors’ associations standing to sue the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for failing to amend alleged inaccurate language on the cover of issued U.S patents. District Judge Rachel Kovner of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation, authored the precedential opinion of the court.

Yesterday, a petition for writ of certiorari was filed at the U.S. Supreme Court taking aim at the federal judiciary’s conflation of subject matter eligibility with other areas of the patent statute, a growing concern in U.S. patent law since the Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank International (2014). Arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit used a single observation to answer both steps of the Alice/Mayo inquiry, the petitioner urges the Court to correct the Federal Circuit’s replacement of its flexible two-step Section 101 framework with rigid proxies that avoid the evidentiary safeguards of other patentability statutes.

About 20 years ago, Hotels.com had a series of commercials starring a character called “Captain Obvious.” This character would make observations that were funny because they were apparent to all. And that is what non-patent lawyers think of when it comes to something that is obvious. That is also the approach taken in a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) cases, i.e. the “Captain Obvious” approach. Specifically, the recent Nielsen (The Nielsen Co. (US), LLC, v. TVision Insights, Inc., —

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today, authored by Chief Judge Moore, first affirming a district court’s orders dismissing a patent infringement complaint without granting leave to amend and awarding attorney’s fees, and secondly, dismissing an appeal of attorney sanctions for lack of jurisdiction. VDDP, LLC sued Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 9,426,452, relating to “electrically controlled spectacles.”… The district court dismissed the case with prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6), denied the motion for leave to amend as futile, denied VDDP’s motion to amend the judgment under Rule 59(e), awarded Volkswagen $207,543.60 in attorney’s fees, and sanctioned VDDP’s counsel, William Peterson Ramey III, under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, holding him and VDDP jointly and severally liable for the attorney’s fees.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in 10x Genomics, Inc. v. Parse Biosciences, Inc., affirming three Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found all challenged claims of three 10x Genomics patents unpatentable as obvious. Circuit Judge Cunningham wrote for the court, joined by Circuit Judges Taranto and Bryson, and rejected each of the four challenges that 10x Genomics raised on appeal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Robert Bosch LLC, Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC v. Westport Fuel Systems Canada Inc., affirming two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found Robert Bosch and Mercedes-Benz USA failed to prove challenged claims of two fuel injector patents would have been obvious. The court rejected arguments that the PTAB lacked substantial evidence to find that a prior art reference disclosed a flexible membrane capable of flexing during actuation, thereby failing to meet a specific hydraulic link limitation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction in a decision on August 13 barring Meritain Health, Inc., ProAct, Inc., Rx Valet, LLC, Advanced Pharmacy, LLC, Aqua Enterprise Inc., and Gregory Santulli from importing, advertising, or facilitating the importation of foreign-market Gilead Sciences, Inc. medications into the United States. Judge Agee wrote the opinion on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, joined by Judge Harris and Senior Judge Keenan.

Yesterday, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Horan of the Northern District of Texas entered a report and recommendation urging the district court to deny motions for dismissal or a more definitive statement filed by German software giant SAP in a trade secret case brought by Texas-based enterprise AI developer o9 Solutions. While acknowledging that either side’s theory of the case might ultimately win, Judge Horan found that the burdens associated with SAP’s motions ultimately led to the conclusion that o9’s misappropriation case over supply chain management software should proceed.