Posts in Courts

An Appeals Review Panel (ARP) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s ) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) today issued a decision on sua sponte rehearing reversing a PTAB decision that had itself reversed an examiner’s rejection of claims for obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP). The decision has been designated as precedential and was authored by USPTO Director John A. Squires, PTAB Chief Judge Kalyan Deshpande, and PTAB Acting Deputy Chief Judge Michelle Ankenbrand.

Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, has introduced a bill to designate courtroom 201 at the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building located at 717 Madison Place NW, Washington, DC, as the “Pauline Newman Courtroom”. Room 201 is the main courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued an opinion authored by Chief District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation, affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that Lululemon had shown the challenged claims of Nike, Inc.’s patent to be unpatentable.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a published ruling reversing the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona’s entry of permanent injunction for distiller Jack Daniel’s in the long-running trademark case involving VIP Products’ Bad Spaniels dog toy. This latest chapter in the decade-plus-long case remands the decision back to the district court with orders to enter judgment in favor of defendant VIP Products after finding that Jack Daniel’s did not meet its burden to show dilution by tarnishment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Tuesday affirming a judgment of non-infringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in a dispute concerning generic versions of the topical pain patch ZTlido. The panel of Judges Reyna, Mayer, and Hughes, ruling per curiam, upheld the district court’s construction of the term “dissolving agent” and its determination that Aveva Drug Delivery Systems’ proposed generic product did not infringe under the doctrine of equivalents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Tuesday, authored by CAFC Chief Judge Moore, vacating a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction (PI) for Socket Solutions, LLC that had barred Import Global from manufacturing, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing into the United States its Neat Socket® product.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Monday in MPH Technologies Oy v. Apple Inc., reversing a district court’s narrow construction of key claim terms and its finding of indefiniteness. The ruling revives MPH Technologies’ patent infringement claims against Apple, which had been stipulated away following the district court’s adverse claim construction rulings.

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday denied a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Amazon.com Services LLC requesting that a district court proceeding be stayed pending the outcome of a separate proceeding against Google involving one of the same patents.

What value is a patent that expires before it issues? Until recently, that question seemed wholly academic. In In re Forest, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) answered it directly: A patent that issues after its expiration date has no value; it provides neither exclusionary rights nor provisional rights. In the court’s view, the applicant has no cognizable interest in the patent or the application on which it would be based.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday affirming a grant of summary judgment of noninfringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The appeal, brought by the Regents of the University of Michigan against Leica Microsystems, Inc., concerned the construction of claim language describing a “supercontinuum” white light pulse used in fluorescence detection technology.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision denying Pfizer’s motions to amend two patent claims. This is Pfizer’s a second appeal following a March 2024 precedential CAFC ruling that partially vacated and remanded a previous PTAB decision in favor of Sanofi Pasteur, Inc.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today reversing in part and vacating in part a series of district court rulings that had invalidated a patent covering a firearm cartridge magazine housing. Chief Judge Moore wrote for the court, joined by Circuit Judges Stoll and Stark, finding the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming erred by treating certain claim terms as indefinite.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling for Samsung Electronics, finding the Board did not violate the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and that substantial evidence supported its findings. Samsung filed for inter partes review (IPR) of claims 1–5, 7–9, 14, and 20 of G+ Communications’ U.S. Patent No. 10,736,130, which is titled “Method and device for uplink control signal transmission, user terminal, and storage medium.” The PTAB ultimately found that U.S. Patent No. 10,615,925 (“Kwak”) anticipated all of the challenged claims, and G+ Communications appealed.

Kahoot AS! filed a petition for writ of certiorari on July 24 asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) “settled expectations” doctrine for denying inter partes review (IPR) requests is authorized under the patent statute. The petition also asked the High Court whether 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) bars judicial review of that question.